India: 53% want Modi to be PM in 2024 too 

BY S VENKAT NARAYAN
Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, August 13: Prime Minister Narendra Modi remains by far India’s most popular and tallest political leader despite inflation, raging Covid-19, surging oil prices, and a multitude of problems that have plagued the National Democratic Alliance (NDA)-led government over the past two years.

According to the August edition of the Mood of the Nation poll by India Today news magazine, Modi’s popularity continues to remain ahead of his political rivals, even after being in office for over eight years. There is no one even close to him.Close to 53 per cent of respondents in the poll favoured Modi as the next prime minister. While only nine percent backed Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, and seven percent favoured of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) national convener Arvind Kejriwal for the top post.

Forty percent of respondents rated Congress’s role as Opposition as ‘good’, while 34 per cent rated it as ‘poor’.

The survey revealed that 23 per cent of the respondents believed Rahul Gandhi to be best suited to revive the Congress, while 16 per cent backed former former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for the role while 14 percent of those surveyed believed Sachin Pilot would be able to revive the Grand Old Party, with only nine percent favouring Priyanka Gandhi Vadra for the role.

The survey was conducted by India Today in association with C-Voter to gauge the nation’s mood The recent Bihar political upheaval would likely impact the alliance’s seat share, as per the August edition of the Mood of the Nation poll.

The survey found that, if the polls were held today, the NDA government would be in lead, but it will have to bear the brunt of Nitish Kumar leaving the alliance in Bihar.According to the survey, if the Lok Sabha elections were held by August 1, the NDA would have got 307 seats out of 543 in the Lok Sabha, UPA 125 seats, while other parties would have won 111 seats. But if elections are held after the change of government in Bihar, then the NDA would have a direct loss of 21 seats. The NDA would get 286 seats, while the UPA would get 146 seats, the survey found.

A large part of the poll was held before Nitish Kumar snapped ties with the BJP-led NDA in Bihar, but a snap poll on August 10 gave immediate fallout of Nitish Kumar’s dramatic shift in alliances.India Today and C-Voter conducted the survey between February 2022 and August 2022. A total of 122,016 respondents were interviewed to gauge the nation’s mood.