New Delhi, India – India’s 73-year-old Prime Minister Narendra Modi appears poised for a rare third term and is likely to be re-elected with a landslide majority, exit polls showed on Saturday night, damaging the opposition alliance in the biggest democratic vote of the world of all time.
If the official results, due on Tuesday, June 4, support these polls, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will not only emerge unscathed from rising inequality, record unemployment and rising prices, but could do better than the last elections in 2019 Never before has a Prime Minister in independent India won three consecutive Lok Sabha elections with increasingly better numbers.
At least seven exit polls released by Indian media organizations predicted that the BJP and its allies would win between 350-380 seats out of 543 seats in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Indian parliament.
Refusing to weigh in on exit polls, the INDIA opposition alliance – a group of more than two dozen political groups that hopes to unseat the BJP’s Hindu-majority government – maintained stoic confidence that it would achieve a majority on the day of the count.
Exit polls in India have a patchy record and previous polls have both underestimated and overestimated the number of different parties. However, for the most part, they correctly predicted the broader trends of the last two decades, with a few exceptions. Nearly a billion Indians were registered to vote in the mammoth seven-phase elections that lasted six weeks and concluded on Saturday night.
“Modi is extraordinarily popular. Everything about this BJP campaign was about Modi for a reason,” said Neelanjan Sircar, senior researcher at the New Delhi-based Center for Political Research (CPR). “Certain narratives emerged that suggested people were upset with the government, but translating that into seats was always going to be a challenge.”
BJP expands into new areas
While INDIA’s opposition bloc is expected to perform well in the country’s southern states, most polls suggest that the BJP could make impressive gains in these states as well.
Several exit polls predict that the BJP could win 2-3 seats in Kerala, the last stronghold of the Indian left where Modi’s party has never won; while the BJP could win 1-3 seats in Tamil Nadu, where it drew a blank in the last elections. These victories, if materialized, could give the BJP a foothold in the opposition strongholds, where it has been fighting for decades.
The BJP and its allies are also expected to retain their seats in Karnataka: The BJP won 25 of the state’s 28 seats in 2019. And it could emerge as the biggest single winner in Telangana. These results would represent a dramatic setback for the opposition Congress party, which leads the INDIA alliance and won state legislative elections – defeating the BJP – in both Karnataka and Telangana just last year.
“The gains in the south are surprising. And forecasts suggest a huge gain,” said Asim Ali, a political commentator. “Even if the BJP doesn’t get as many seats [as predicted in the exit polls]the increase in vote share is a big change.”
Meanwhile, the BJP is expected to sweep its strong states including Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh.
The opposition alliance is expected to make marginal gains in Bihar and Rajasthan, both states that the BJP almost swept in the last elections, and in the northern states of Haryana and Punjab.
Sudha Joshi, a 76-year-old voter from Chittorgarh in Rajasthan, didn’t look up from her smartphone as anchors shouted to each other about a “thunderous mandate” for Modi on Saturday night. She purchased the smartphone last year under a welfare scheme run by the then state Congress government.
Last December, Rajasthan voted to eliminate the Congress and brought the BJP back to power in the state.
Joshi’s political allegiances also changed. Born in 1947, when India gained independence, Joshi never missed an opportunity to vote, she said. A traditional Congress voter, Joshi said she lost hope in the Nehru-Gandhi family, which dominates the party, and instead came to see a leader in Modi.
“In 2014, when Modi first ran, I could see a leader who would take India to international heights,” she said, elated by the exit polls. “We are satisfied with his governance because he is a religious person like us, a true patriot.”
His views reflect broader sentiment, analysts say.
“A large part of society, with a guy like Modi at the top – someone “you can believe in” – can only imagine him as a leader today,” said CPR’s Sircar. “The BJP owes its success to Modi’s popularity.”
Zafar Islam, national spokesperson for the BJP, said exit polls reflect that voters “appreciated the BJP’s governance model, welfare schemes and PM Modi’s vision”.
“The ease of living has improved for people under Modi’s leadership and that is why we are looking forward to a historic verdict,” he told Al Jazeera.
Five more years of BJP dominance?
Modi’s re-election campaign was punctuated by fear-mongering, in which he and the BJP continually projected the prime minister as a savior of the larger Hindu population against an opposition conspiracy to benefit Muslims, whom he referred to as “infiltrators.” ” and “those with the most children” at campaign rallies.
With an estimated population of 200 million, India is home to the third largest Muslim community in the world, after Indonesia and Pakistan.
The opposition, however, tried to corner Modi on issues of social justice and equality. This topic struck a chord with Vikrant Singh, a 21-year-old political science student.
Singh traveled more than 160 km (100 miles) to return home to Pratapgarh, Uttar Pradesh, to vote against the BJP, he said. “Public universities are getting expensive and unemployment is rising,” he said. “I’m almost done with graduate school and have no job opportunities to look forward to.”
He is a first-time voter, and for Indians his age, the previous Congress government – the party was last in power between 2004 and 2014 – is now a distant memory. And the future, he said, doesn’t look bright.
“BJP’s main focus has been on winning elections and not governing,” he said. “They seek cultural hegemony and capture young minds by controlling the media.”
In Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state, the BJP is expected to win more than 65 of the 80 seats along with its allies, up from 62 in the last elections. After the exit polls were published, Modi said the opposition alliance “failed to please voters”.
“Through the campaign, they only honed their knowledge in one thing: attacking Modi. This regressive policy was rejected by the people,” he wrote in X.
If the election results confirm the poll results, Sircar noted that India expects another five years “under the centralized coalition of Modi and Amit Shah,” referring to the country’s home minister, who is widely seen as the country’s deputy. Prime Minister.
“This BJP only knows this way of working: a government where power is completely centralized at the top.”
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
