Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Saturday said that he expects the Bharatiya Janata Party to emerge as the single-largest party in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, although adding that its tally can be brought down to a level that its potential allies may no longer be willing to support and instead back opposition alliance.
"I still expect that the BJP will emerge as the single-largest party," said the Congress MP while speaking at the Kerala Literature Festival (KLF) in a session, 'India: The Future is Now'.
"But I do believe their numbers can be brought down to a level where their potential allies required to form a government may no longer be willing to ally with them and may be willing to ally with us. So we have to give it a try," he added.
Talking about the Opposition's I.N.D.I.A bloc, the Congress leader said that India is a diverse county and he is perfectly prepared to live with the situation where they don't have a "100 per cent agreement in 100 per cent of the states".
The Thiruvananthapuram MP also talked about the difficulties related to seat-sharing among parties of the I.N.D.I.A bloc and said he only hopes to have "sufficient agreements" in as many states as possible so that "preventable defeats" can be avoided.
While one state can see an agreement amongst all the opposition parties and have one unified candidate against the BJP, another state might have two or three candidates, in which case "the voter has to choose the person they consider would best represent them", he said.
"That's the best thing they can do, and if it so happens, and there is enough divergence of views, maybe the BJP candidate will win. But that's democracy in our first-past-the-post system," he added.