Current Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party has declared victory in India’s parliamentary elections, but with the majority of votes counted, his Hindu nationalist party will lose its parliamentary majority, according to preliminary results.
The people of the country “expressed their confidence in their ruling coalition for the third time in a row,” Modi wrote on social media platform X on Tuesday night.
Although Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the most votes, it will have to rely on its two coalition partners to form a government.
It is considered certain that Modi could continue to govern for a third five-year term, but Rahul Gandhi of the opposition Congress has not ruled out talks with two of Modi’s coalition partners.
“I am extremely proud of the people of India,” Gandhi said, adding that the country’s people clearly demonstrated their rejection of Modi as head of government.
The stock market suffered its worst losses in four years in response to Modi’s setback.
Modi’s BJP alone won 303 seats in the previous elections, well above the 272-seat majority needed to govern. Five years ago, together with his allies, he won 353 seats, an overwhelming majority.
Before this election, Modi had raised the bar for success in the election campaign. He predicted that the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA), led by Modi’s BJP, would win more than 400 of the 543 seats up for grabs in the lower house and increase its majority.
Instead, he failed to achieve that goal.
However, Modi was expected to become only the second prime minister in the country’s history to rule for three consecutive terms, after Jawaharlal Nehru, the country’s first.
As India is the most populous country in the world, the election for the Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament, was the largest election in the world, lasting around six weeks. Almost 970 million people were eligible to vote.
The BJP has taken a strongly Hindu nationalist stance. Critics and the opposition feared that if Modi were re-elected, he might seek to change the South Asian country’s constitution in order to further cement this course.
The opposition has consistently warned that democracy is weakening under Modi’s leadership. Several opposition politicians were arrested on corruption charges during the election campaign.
Modi takes credit for any positive developments in the country and emphasizes India’s growing importance on the world stage.
In response to China’s growing aggression, Germany, the US and other Western countries seek closer relations with India.
Critics argue that these countries are ignoring the fact that India remains neutral in the Ukraine war, buys a significant amount of cheap Russian oil and maintains strong ties with Moscow.
