The Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, is heading towards an electoral victory which, however, has disappointed expectations and has not given the Hindu nationalist leader an absolute majority in Parliament, for the first time in 10 years. The opposition – of which one of the most prominent leaders, Raul Gandhi, was also re-elected – said that voters had “punished” the ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Analysts and exit polls had predicted a landslide victory for Modi, whose nationalist campaign has sparked concern among the country’s more than 200 million Muslims, exacerbating concerns about minority rights. The BJP won an absolute majority when it came to power in 2014, ending an era of unstable coalition governments, and repeated the feat in 2019. This year, for the first time, Modi’s party could fail to record the same result, according to the electoral commission’s forecasts.
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He will therefore have to count on his partners in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), mainly: the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) of leader Chandrababu Naidu, and the Janata Dal (United) of Nitish Kumar, who have already declared their support for Modi’s name for the post of prime minister. With over 95% of the ballots counted, the BJP’s vote share is 36.9%, slightly lower than the last consultation in 2019. Modi was re-elected in his constituency representing the Hindu holy city of Varanasi. Election Commission data shows that the BJP and its allies are leading with at least 292 seats out of a total of 543, enough to get a majority. The BJP, however, controls ‘only’ 240, a figure significantly down on the 303 seats it obtained five years ago.
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The main opposition party, Gandhi’s Congress, is destined to almost double its seats in Parliament: at the moment it would have obtained 98 seats, an increase compared to 52 in 2019. “The voters have punished the BJP”, he told the Gandhi journalists, “I was confident that the people of this country would give the right answer.” Indian stocks fell on speculation that a narrow majority would hamper the BJP’s ability to push through reforms. Shares in Adani Enterprises’ main publicly traded unit – owned by Modi’s key ally Gautam Adani – fell 25%, before rebounding.
