Team Blitz India
The filing of nomination by Prime Minister Narendra Modi from Uttar Pradesh’s Varanasi on May 14 followed a six-km roadshow by him in the historic city the previous day. Crisscrossing the length and breadth of the country with a spate of public meetings and roadshows since the beginning of the poll campaign over a month ago, the BJP’s star campaigner has already created a record-of-sort.
According to an analysis carried out by a weekly news magazine, PM Modi has addressed more than double the number of rallies by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi till the third phase of the General Elections 2024. The figures of PM Modi’s rallies are much higher even if the public meetings addressed by Congress’ top family’s daughter Priyanka Gandhi Vadra are added to that of her brother.
PM Modi, according to this report, addressed 83 election rallies across 18 states and Union Territories between March 31 and May 5 – the last day of campaigning for the third phase. As opposed to this, the number of rallies addressed by Rahul Gandhi stood at 40, as per the data compiled and analysed by the magazine.
But winning a ‘battle of poll rallies’ against Rahul Gandhi shouldn’t come as much of a surprise since the most popular world leader had already established a much bigger electoral milestone after being declared as the BJP’s PM candidate in 2013.
According to media reports of 2014 – based on the data provided by the BJP – Modi addressed 437 public rallies and covered a distance of three lakh kilometre across the country, since his first rally. The calculations, said the party, were based on the number of rallies planned till May 10, when the campaigning ended for the final round of General Elections 2014. This was the largest mass outreach in India’s electoral history.
