Indian voters have dealt a crushing blow to the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) dream of dominating parliament and passing laws unchecked. India's opposition bloc put up a spirited fight in the parliamentary election to deny Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party a majority.
The BJP fell well short of the 272-seat mark in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament, which has 543 elected members. In the 2019 election, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) won 353 seats, with the BJP alone grabbing 303 seats. Some 642 million of the 969 million eligible voters participated in the polling, which was held in seven phases between 19 April and 1 June in the world's biggest election marathon.
The BJP has almost 240 members in the new parliament and needs the support of its allies to let Modi, 73, become prime minister for a third term. The NDA said it expected to win 400 seats, meaning it fell way short of its own expectations. The Congress-led Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) accused the BJP of trying to change India's post-independence constitution in line with its divisive Hindu nationalist agenda. For its part, the BJP denies it has such ambitions.
First place, but weakened
In the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, the BJP suffered its biggest setback, as the seat-sharing arrangement between the Congress and the Samajwadi Party of former state chief minister Akhilesh Yadav paid off spectacularly for the INDIA bloc. The BJP is down but still has the most seats compared with other parties. Congress came in second with 99 seats, Samajwadi secured 37 seats, the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) of West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee got 29, and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) of Tamil Nadu chief minister M.K. Stalin won 22 seats.
Congress, Samajwadi, and the DMK formed the INDIA bloc, which included more than two dozen parties united in their mission to oust the BJP from power. Should an opportunity arise, they are now in a stronger position to exploit any cracks in the BJP-led NDA. The opposition performed far better than the 1 June exit polls published by Indian media companies and pollsters, which had predicted that Modi and his allies would secure two-thirds of the parliament.
For their part, Congress and other opposition leaders said the exit polls were manipulated and being used as "psychological games", giving the Indian stock market a sharp boost on Monday when the markets opened. However, the markets plummeted when the actual results on Tuesday (4 June) emerged. Investors lost around $370bn (about 31 trillion Indian rupees)—the biggest single-day loss in four years.
One head of a voter survey agency wept miserably on television, and leading news anchors—often mocked as "lapdog media" because of their pro-BJP coverage—were visibly shocked. The BJP's poorer-than-expected performance gives its potential coalition partners more leeway as Modi awaits an invitation from India's president to form a new government.
Speaking at the BJP headquarters on Tuesday evening, Modi said the NDA was ready to form its third government. That would make Modi the first Indian prime minister after Jawaharlal Nehru to win three consecutive terms in office. And he was quick to draw comparisons with Nehru’s 1962 election to underscore his achievement.
But any similarity between the two men ends there. Whereas Nehru is remembered for his liberal and democratic vision for India, Modi's two terms were defined by rising religious intolerance and authoritarianism in the country. Speaking about what his new term will bring, Modi promised to "script a new chapter of big decisions."
Uttar Pradesh shock
While Modi's home state, Gujarat, stayed loyal to him by giving the BJP 25 of the 26 seats, Uttar Pradesh—the most populous Indian state with 80 lower house seats—delivered the greatest shock to the BJP with 43 seats going to the Samajwadi and Congress. This was the state where Modi provocatively inaugurated the Ram temple on the site of the demolished historic Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in January, weeks before the election announcement in March. The BJP leaders touted the inauguration as a fulfilment of a grand BJP promise, hoping it would help them in the polls.
However, what the voters remembered instead was the party's unfulfilled promises on bread-and-butter issues and a lack of concern over rising unemployment, inflation and under-capacity in providing healthcare, transport and education facilities to the burgeoning population.
Read more: Can the BJP's popularity withstand rising poverty in India?
Islamophobia was rampant in the BJP election campaign, and the Election Commission was seemingly unable to deal with the frequent flagrant violations of rules against the promotion of religious hatred or communal enmity. BJP candidate Lallu Singh lost to Awadesh Prasad of the Samajwadi Party in Faizabad, the constituency in which Ayodhya is located. That surely hurt the BJP beyond the symbolism the defeat carries.
Modi won his Varanasi constituency in Uttar Pradesh, but his victory margin was significantly lower than in the elections of 2019 and 2014. Federal minister Smriti Irani lost in Amethi in her fight against Kishori Lal Sharma of the Congress. Irani had defeated Rahul in the 2019 election. Akhilesh Yadav, who led a hectic campaigning schedule for his party and Congress candidates, won his bastion, Kannauj, while his wife clinched an impressive win in the Mainpuri constituency.
The BJP captured all seven constituencies of the national capital, New Delhi, and scored near-total wins in the states of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. For his part, opposition leader Rahul Gandhi won by a huge margin in Raebareli in Uttar Pradesh and Wayanad in Kerala state, the two constituencies from where he contested.
Read more: Rahul Gandhi: The thorn in the side of Modi
"The nation has clearly told (Prime Minister) Modi that we do not want you. This is the main thing this election has said," Rahul said at a press conference for Congress.
It must be pointed out that the eastern state of Odisha has saved the BJP from humiliation. The BJP in Odisha crushed the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) headed by Naveen Patnaik, who has been the state's chief minister since 2000. The BJP has won 19 of the state's 21 seats in the national parliament.
The DMK dominates the southern state of Tamil Nadu, where the BJP and its allies were again badly humiliated. The West Bengal-based AITC opposes the BJP but has maintained some distance from the opposition bloc. It has won 29 of the state's 41 seats. Another significant player in the new parliament will be the Janata Dal United of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, an NDA member. It has bagged 12 of Bihar's 40 parliamentary seats, putting it in a position to drive a hard bargain in government formation.
