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Modi’s BJP to lose majority in India election clash, needs allies for government | India Elections 2024 News

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Modi’s BJP to lose majority in India election clash, needs allies for government | India Elections 2024 News

New Delhi, India — Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is on the verge of losing its national majority after suffering significant losses in key states, marking a sea change in a political landscape it has dominated for the last decade.

The BJP is on track to comfortably become the country’s largest party in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of India’s parliament. But as election officials announced the results of India’s six-week election on Tuesday, it became clear that the BJP would struggle to repeat its performances from 2014 and 2019.

Unlike those two elections, where the BJP alone won a clear majority in a 543-seat house, its leads and victories hovered around 240 constituencies for much of the day. The midterm is 272 seats.

By contrast, the opposition INDIA alliance, led by the Congress party, is expected to win more than 200 seats, suggesting a much closer fight than exit polls had predicted. Released on June 1 after the final phase of India’s election cycle, exit polls suggested the BJP would surpass its 2019 tally of 303 seats.

Modi and his party will likely still be able to form India’s next government, but they will depend on a group of allies they will need to cross the 272-seat mark. The BJP and its allies – their coalition is known as the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) – are expected to win around 290 seats by late Tuesday afternoon.

“India will probably have an NDA government, in which the BJP will not have a majority on its own, and coalition politics will really come into play,” said Sandeep Shastri, national coordinator of the Lokniti Network, a research program at the University of New Delhi. Center for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS).

On Tuesday evening, Modi said, in his first comments after the results were declared, that he had claimed victory for the NDA.

Still, analysts say the election verdict raises questions about the BJP’s strategy. As India’s long election campaign unfolded, Modi, India’s charismatic and polarizing prime minister, increasingly turned to fearmongering over an alleged opposition plot to hand over resources of the country to Muslims, to the detriment of its Hindu majority. Meanwhile, the opposition had tried to corner Modi on his government’s economic record: while the country is the world’s fastest-growing large economy, voters told pollsters before the election that inflation high and unemployment were their main concerns.

The BJP’s campaign slogan, “Abki baar, 400 paar (This time, more than 400)”, set a target of 400 seats for its alliance and 370 seats for the BJP itself.

The speech had a “tone of overconfidence,” said Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, Modi’s biographer, at a time when many Indian citizens were confronting the lived realities of soaring prices, unemployment and soaring income inequality that they are now worse than before. British colonial rule. The result was “the BJP’s sleepwalking into disaster,” said Asim Ali, a political analyst and columnist.

“Today, Modi has lost face. He is not that ‘undefeated person’ and his invincible aura is no longer there,” Ali said.

Form the next government

In some ways, the election verdict echoes that of 2004, when another sitting BJP government, led by then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, was expected to win a overwhelming mandate thanks to exit polls.

Instead, the Congress slightly edged the BJP in terms of victories and formed the government with its allies.

But 2024 is not 2004. Despite the setbacks, the BJP remains by far the largest party in Parliament and in position to form the next government with its NDA allies. The Congress, the largest opposition party, is expected to win around 100 seats, less than half the total expected by the BJP once all votes are counted.

However, two regional parties will now hold the key to the Indian prime ministership: Janata Dal-United, led by Nitish Kumar in the state of Bihar; and the Telugu Desam Party, led by Chandrababu Naidu in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. The TDP is leading with 16 seats and the JD(U) with 12 seats. Both parties have also already formed an alliance with the Congress party.

While the BJP has made notable inroads in southern India – particularly in Kerala, where it is expected to win its first-ever Lok Sabha seat – its overall numbers have been hit by significant losses in the central-speaking states. Hindi, which he had swept aside in recent years. last election.

In Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state and a key determinant of who governs nationally, the Hindu nationalist party lost in the parliamentary district of Faizabad, home to the controversial Ram temple, built on the ruins of the 16th century Babri mosque. Modi had dedicated the temple in January.

The dedication of the Ram temple, overseen by Modi, was at the forefront of the BJP’s campaign to mobilize Hindu voters. The party also lost the key Amethi seat, where federal minister Smriti Irani faces defeat. Irani had won a dramatic victory over Rahul Gandhi, the scion of the Gandhi family, by 55,000 votes in 2019. This year, Gandhi contested from the neighboring Rae Bareli constituency and won the seat by a margin of over two times higher than that of Modi. its headquarters, Varanasi, also in Uttar Pradesh.

The BJP also suffered losses in Maharashtra, India’s politically critical second-largest state. At 6 p.m. India time (00:30 GMT), when most votes were counted, the INDIA alliance was leading with 29 of the state’s 48 seats. Only Uttar Pradesh has more seats – 80. In 2019, the BJP alone had won 23 seats in Maharashtra, and its allies won 18 more.

Besides Maharashtra, three other states that have been epicenters of India’s agrarian crisis, with major farm protests, also saw losses for the BJP compared to 2019: Haryana, Rajasthan and Punjab. The BJP rules the states of Haryana and Rajasthan.

Congress celebrations

As soon as the first trends emerged on Tuesday morning, Congress supporters invaded the party headquarters in New Delhi. Supporters were seen sporting white T-shirts with photos of Rahul Gandhi on the back, as they waved party flags, their eyes glued to the giant screens showing the results live.

“Now at least Indians will have a voice to raise against the cruel BJP, which has ruled us for the last 10 years. More seats mean we have a say and a strong opposition,” said Suresh Verma, a Congress supporter.

This change in the composition of India’s next parliament could also affect how laws are passed. Critics have accused the BJP government of pushing laws through Parliament without discussion or debate.

It won’t be easy anymore, Shastri said. “It will very clearly be a much tougher task in Parliament for the BJP,” he said.

Beyond Parliament, analysts say a weakened mandate could impact the functioning of India’s other democratic institutions, which critics accuse the BJP of appropriating for partisan political purposes.

“Under the influence of a brute majority, institutions collapsed in India under the BJP. The power system was very centralized at the top, and India needs these kinds of coalition governments for its democracy to survive,” Ali said.

What future for the BJP?

Once the dust settles on these results, the BJP will do some soul-searching and the dominant duo of Modi and Amit Shah, India’s home minister widely seen as the prime minister’s deputy, will face challenges. more difficult questions. “There will be questions about how to imagine Modi as an alliance leader, where he should listen much more to non-BJP leaders,” said Shastri of the CSDS.

Ali, the political analyst, also noted that “the BJP failed to read the terrain” and that a group of yes-men around Modi potentially caught his party off guard. “It’s like we’re only telling the king the stories he wants to hear,” he said. “It’s really important for the BJP that there is a feedback mechanism and decentralization of power.”

Over the past decade, under a Modi-led BJP majority government, India has slipped on several democratic indexes amid accusations of a crackdown on dissent, political opposition and the media. Modi has not addressed any press conference in the last decade as prime minister.

With the coalition partners controlling the BJP, “there will be respite for Indian civil society and critics of the government,” said Mukhopadhyay, the biographer.

For many Indian Muslims, the result also means relief.

Watching the results from his slum in northeast New Delhi, Akbar Khan, a 33-year-old waste picker, said he was delighted. With all seats in Delhi currently dominated by the BJP, Khan said “people have taken to the streets and fought this election against the (incumbent) government”.

Khan, who also works with waste picker communities in states like Bihar and Jharkhand, said: “The economically backward castes and classes are extremely unhappy with Modi, and his divisive policies have not borne any fruit in their kitchen. »

As a Muslim, Khan said he was upset by Modi’s Islamophobic remarks during the re-election campaign, where he likened the community to “infiltrators” and described them as people “who have more children” .

“Indians had to vote against this hatred of Modi and the BJP,” he said.