A victory that feels like defeat: Narendra Modi-led coalition to form next government in India

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India recently held its general elections in seven phases from April 19 to June 1, 2024, selecting all 543 Lok Sabha members. With over 968 million eligible voters out of a population of 1.4 billion, the turnout was reached an amazing 642 million, including 312 million women, a historic high. The recent election results in India failed to declare any leader or party a winner. Democracy and the sentiments of common man won over any party, candidate or leader.

In what opposition parties have declared as a victory for pluralism, voters in the world’s largest democracy partially rejected Modi’s vision for one-party state in win for competitive democracy.

“Indian voters can’t be taken for granted,” said the Times of India newspaper in an editorial. “Voters have clearly indicated that jobs and economic aspirations matter. The economic message from the results is that jobs matter.”

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which was predicted to win big, fell short of the 272 mark. 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. BJP however won 240 seats – 32 short of the majority mark in the 543-member Lower House of Parliament, suffered major losses in key states, marking a dramatic shift in a political landscape it has dominated for the past decade.

Modi and his party will still likely to be able to form India’s next government – but will be dependent on a clutch of allies whose support they will need to cross the 272-seat mark. The BJP with its allies, in a coalition known as the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), won 293 seats. The election result for BJP is being termed as “a victory that feels like defeat.”

By contrast, the opposition INDIA alliance, led by the Congress party, won 232 seats, significantly higher than exit polls had predicted. Despite the setbacks, the BJP is still, by far, the largest party in parliament, and in a position to form the next government along with its NDA allies. Congress, the largest opposition party, won 99 seats, less than half of the tally the BJP is expected to end up with when all votes are counted.

It is a point Modi emphasised in his public address. “All our opponents, put together, did not win as many seats as the BJP alone,” he said.

Still, two regional parties now hold the key to the office of the prime minister of India: 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 won 16 seats and the JD(U) 12. Both the parties have also previously been in alliance with the Congress party.

BJP’s loss in Uttar Pradesh came as the biggest shock. It is India’s biggest state and a key determinant of who rules nationally. The further shock was BJP’s lost in the Faizabad parliamentary district, home to the Ram Temple. Ram Mandir was at the forefront of the BJP’s campaign to mobilise Hindu voters.

The party also lost the key seat of Amethi, where Minister Smriti Irani was defeated. Irani had pulled off a spectacular win over Rahul Gandhi, the scion of the Gandhi family, by 55,000 votes in 2019.

This year, Gandhi contested from neighbouring Rae Bareli constituency and won the seat by a margin more than twice the size by which Modi won his seat, Varanasi, also in Uttar Pradesh.

Overall, the BJP won just 33 seats out of Uttar Pradesh’s 80, a significant drop from the 62 it won in 2019 and its tally of 71 from 2014. The regional Samajwadi Party, a part of the opposition INDIA alliance, won 37 seats, while the Congress won six others.

The BJP also suffered losses in Maharashtra, India’s second-most politically critical state. With most votes counted, the INDIA alliance won 30 of the state’s 48 seats. Only Uttar Pradesh has more seats – 80. In 2019, the BJP alone had won 23 seats in Maharashtra, with its allies winning another 18.

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

With a coalition government, there will be a changed composition of India’s parliament. Beyond parliament, analysts said a weakened mandate could affect the functioning of India’s other democratic institutions.

Modi’s swearing in will make him the first leader since India’s founding prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru to secure a third five-year term. President Droupadi Murmu on June 7 formally invited Prime Minister Narendra Modi to form the next government, and begin his third successive term as Prime Minister, after NDA’s Parliamentary Party elected him as its leader. The new government will be sworn in on Sunday, June 9, the Rashtrapati Bhavan announced.