Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his allies yesterday were heading for election victory, but the opposition said they had “punished” the ruling party to confound predictions and reduce their parliamentary majority.
Commentators and exit polls had projected an overwhelming victory for Modi, whose campaign wooed the Hindu majority to the concern of the nation’s 200-million-plus Muslim community, but for the first time in a decade Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) could fail to secure an overall majority of its own, figures from the election commission projected, meaning it would need to rely on its alliance partners.
The main opposition Congress party was set to nearly double its parliamentary seats, in a remarkable turnaround largely driven by deals to field single candidates against the BJP’s electoral juggernaut.
Photo: AFP
“Voters have punished the BJP,” Congress leader Rahul Gandhi told reporters. “I was confident that the people of this country would give the right response.”
With more than 95 percent of votes counted, the BJP’s vote share at 36.9 percent was marginally lower than it was in the last election in 2019.
Modi was re-elected to his constituency representing the Hindu holy city of Varanasi by a margin of 152,000 votes — compared with nearly 500,000 votes five years ago.
The election commission figures showed the BJP and its allies leading in at least 292 seats out of a total of 543, enough for a parliamentary majority, but the BJP itself had won or was leading in only 240, well down from the 303 it took five years ago, while Congress had won or was ahead in 98, up from 52.
Celebrations had already begun at the headquarters of Modi’s BJP before the full announcement of results, but the mood at the Congress headquarters in New Delhi was also one of jubilation.
“BJP has failed to win a big majority on its own,” Congress lawmaker Rajeev Shukla told reporters. “It’s a moral defeat for them.”
Modi’s opponents have struggled to counter the BJP’s well-oiled and well-funded campaign machine, and have been hamstrung by what they say are politically motivated criminal cases aimed at hobbling challengers.
US think tank Freedom House said this year that the BJP had “increasingly used government institutions to target political opponents.”
Many of India’s Muslim minority are increasingly uneasy about their futures and their community’s place in the constitutionally secular nation.
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