Lok Sabha election:I’ll be happy If BJP gets 271 seats alone, Ram Madhav says.

Ram Madhav said he is hopeful that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) will be able to get the magic number in the ongoing Lok Sabha election in what could be the first admission by a BJP leader that the ruling party may not secure a majority on its own.

“If we get 271 seats on our own, we will be very happy,” said the BJP general secretary Ram Madhav in an interview with Bloomberg News.

He said, “with NDA, we will have a comfortable majority,” indicating the BJP’s assessment that the party might not be repeating its performance of the 2014 Lok Sabha election, when it had won 282 parliamentary seats.

This contrasts with what has been claimed by senior party leaders including BJP president Amit Shah and Arun Jaitley. In his election rallies, even Prime Minister Narendra Modi claimed that the BJP was on the path of a bigger victory in the Lok Sabha polls.

Ram Madhav’s remark came at a time when voters delivered their verdict in 424 constituencies in Lok Sabha, including Monday’s 51 parliamentary seats. Only 118 seats in Lok Sabha are left to go to the polls on May 12 and 19 in the next two phases.

Election to the Vellore Lok Sabha constituency was cancelled in the face of allegation of excessive use of money and recovery of huge amount of cash. Votes will be counted on May 23 for 542 Lok Sabha seats.