Narendra Modi will continue as India’s prime minister after voters returned him to power with a weakened legislative mandate, a shock result for Modi who sought — and seemingly expected — a strong majority.
Modi’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) picked up 240 seats in the country’s lower house, known as the Lok Sabha, out of a possible 543 seats.
The results represent a steep drop from the 303 seats nabbed by the party in the 2019 election. Rahul Gandhi, a leading figure of India’s opposition Congress Party, said that: “People’s clear message to Modi ... is that we don’t want you to run the nation.”
The National Democratic Alliance, a BJP-led coalition, secured 293 seats, enough to form government but short of the group’s optimistic public target of 400. On Tuesday, as results crystallized, India’s benchmark Sensex index suffered its largest one-day drop in four years, tumbling 5.74 per cent as investors recoiled at the reality of a coalition government.
To determine the results, election officials sorted through 642 million ballots, roughly equivalent to the combined populations of the U.S., Canada, Mexico, the U.K., and France.
Getting by with a little help from his friends
India’s return to ‘coalition politics’ is a return to compromise in politics and, according to some analysts, good news for democracy.
APF Canada’s South Asia Program Manager, Suvolaxmi Dutta Choudhury, told Asia Watch that the BJP will have to depend on alliance partners for support, which may temper the party's legislative agenda and nudge it away from core Hindu-nationalist pledges.
The new Modi government, said Dutta Choudhury, can be expected to pursue its signature promise of establishing a Viksit Bharat (Developed India), and prioritizing reforms that push India, possibly as early as 2028, to become the world’s third-largest economy.
