Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah met the Union council of ministers at the BJP headquarters in Delhi on Tuesday evening to ‘thank them for their service to the nation’ during last five years.
Visuals from Union Council of Minsters meeting at BJP office in #Delhi. PM @narendramodi also present pic.twitter.com/jcphF7bgIR
— NewsMobile (@NewsMobileIndia) May 21, 2019
The meeting comes just two days ahead of the announcement of the results of the Lok Sabha elections on May 23.
The meet will be followed by Shah hosting a special dinner for the leaders of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). The dinner at Delhi’s ‘The Ashok Hotel’ is also expected to double up as a strategy session – even though Sunday’s exit polls predicted a comfortable victory for the BJP.
Top NDA leaders – Bihar Chief Minister and JD(U) president Nitish Kumar, Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray and Lok Janshakti Party head Ram Vilas Paswan – are likely to attend the dinner.
Twelve of 14 exit polls predicted that the NDA will get full majority with seats ranging from 282 to 365. After the sixth phase of election, the BJP chief had claimed that the party crossed the 300-seat mark.
A party or an alliance needs 271 seats to form the government, as the elections were held on 542 of the 543 Lok Sabha seats.
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In 2014, the BJP had crossed the majority mark on its own – a first for a political party in three decades. But this time, many assumed that the party might need the help of allies to cross the majority mark. Two of the exit polls have also predicted that the NDA might fall a few seats short of majority.