Following the recent general elections in India, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was able to secure only 240 Lok Sabha seats, meaning that the party has lost its absolute legislative majority.
Despite not being a landslide, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s victory would mean he has to serve a tougher term in New Delhi. This is in contrast to his assertions that the BJP won over 400 seats, despite the party having a majority for two terms in a row.
The results, which were announced on Tuesday, disproved the theory that, during the six-week election, Modi’s Hindu nationalist platform would propel him to an overwhelming victory.
With the BJP’s coalition with minor parties, the Indian prime is now expected to hold the position of highest authority. While his Hindu supporters celebrated across the nation, the 73-year-old claimed on Tuesday night that the election results were a victory that guaranteed he would be able to carry out his agenda.
“The nation will write a new chapter of progress during our third term, which will be marked by significant decisions. This is Modi’s assurance,” the politician stated to an enthusiastic assembly in the nation’s capital, New Delhi.
Constant worry
The BJP won 240 seats in the legislature, far fewer than the 303 it held five years prior, and 32 seats short of a majority.The main opposition Congress party nearly doubled its 2019 total of 52 seats to 99 in a stunning turnaround.
“The nation has communicated to Narendra Modi, ‘We reject you,'” opposition leader Rahul Gandhi stated to the media. “I was confident that the people of this country would give the right response.” Exit surveys and commentators predicted an overwhelming victory for Modi, who opponents claim is responsible for jailing opposition figures and violating the rights of India’s Muslim community, which numbers more than 200 million.
Modi received a personal blow when he was re-elected with a considerably smaller margin of 152,300 votes, as opposed to almost half a million votes five years prior, in his seat representing the Hindu holy city of Varanasi. The BJP will need to build consensus in order to get its programs through parliament now that it is reliant on coalition partners.
“The lurking possibility of them using their leverage, encouraged further by feelers from Congress and others in the opposition, is going to be a constant worry for BJP,” stated the Times of India. According to Hartosh Singh Bal, the political editor of The Caravan magazine in New Delhi, Modi must now “struggle with the fate of working with an alliance partner… who could pull the plug at any time.”
Two jailbird Sikh separatist preacher Amritpal Singh and Sheikh Abdul Rashid from Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir, who was detained in 2019 on suspicion of “terror funding” and money laundering, were among the elected independent parliamentarians.
Tuesday’s stock market decline was caused by fears that the BJP’s capacity to enact reforms would be hampered by its smaller majority.Ownered by important Modi friend Gautam Adani, shares in Adani Enterprises’ primary listed division fell 25% before somewhat rising again.
“Death by morality”
Moral defeat
Even before the complete results were released on Tuesday, festivities had already started at the BJP headquarters of Prime Minister Modi. However, there was also joy at the Congress headquarters in New Delhi.
Congressman Rajeev Shukla told reporters, “BJP has failed to win a big majority on its own.” “It’s a moral defeat for them.” The BJP campaign machine was well-oiled and well-funded, and Modi’s opponents had to contend with politically driven criminal proceedings meant to discredit his opponents.
Regarding their futures and their community’s status in the nominally secular nation, many members of India’s Muslim minority are growing more and more anxious.
During his campaign path, Modi called Muslims “infiltrators” and made other strong remarks about them.
With 642 million people casting ballots from megacities like New Delhi and Mumbai to sparsely inhabited forest areas and the high-altitude Himalayas, the polls were astounding in their scope and logistical complexity.
The commission estimates that there are 968 million voters. Accordingly, the turnout was 66.3%, which was a decrease of around 1% from the 67.4% recorded in the most recent 2019 polls.
Commentators attributed the decreased participation in part to a scorching heatwave that swept through northern India, with temperatures surpassing 45 degrees Celsius.
