Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks at a rally in Jelenga Patthar, Sivasagar district, Assam, India on January 23, 2021.
Biju Boro | AFP | Getty Images
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to win an unprecedented third consecutive term in power after local exit polls on Saturday showed his Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition winning a majority in parliament.
The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance is expected to win about 365 of the 543 seats in the lower house, according to a compilation of exit polls by local news station NDTV. Any party or coalition that gets at least 272 votes will form a government. The final results, to be announced on Tuesday, may differ from what the exit polls predicted.
The exit poll results are incomplete but if they are confirmed, Modi will serve another five years as the country’s prime minister, a position he has held since 2014.
India’s elections, the world’s largest democratic elections with just under one billion voters, have been held in seven phases over the past six weeks and began on April 19. A total of 543 seats are at stake in the lower house, and the party or coalition that wins at least 272 votes will form the government.
Under Prime Minister Modi’s decade-long rule, India has experienced strong economic growth and a surge in global recognition. With a population of 1.4 billion people, India is one of the world’s fastest growing economies, expanding 7.2% in fiscal year 2022-2023, the second-highest growth rate among G20 countries. The International Monetary Fund projects India’s economy to grow 6.8% in 2024 and 6.5% in 2025. Meanwhile, China’s projected growth rates are 5% in 2024 and 4.5% in 2025.
Other economists are more optimistic: “The bigger you are, the harder it is to sustain very high growth rates, but I think 7 to 7.5 percent growth is achievable,” Sujan Hajra, chief economist at Anand Rathi Share & Stock Brokers, told CNBC, adding that improving infrastructure will be a big priority to boost growth.
“Compared to hard infrastructure, soft infrastructure such as improving the country’s healthcare network will be given much more emphasis this time because a lot of work has already been done on hard infrastructure,” Kharja said.
In his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) manifesto for the next government, Prime Minister Modi promised that his government would elevate India to one of the world’s top three economies, aggressively fight poverty, forge new paths to growth and combat corruption.
While world leaders are optimistic about India’s growth trajectory under Modi, observers and critics warn that his third term in office could bring further signs of democratic backsliding. He has also faced accusations of hate speech after calling Muslims “infiltrators” at a rally just days after voting began. Religious divisions in India continued to be a hot topic during the election, along with unemployment.
A survey by the Center for Research on Developing Societies found that 27% of 10,000 people surveyed cited unemployment as their top concern, and more than half (62%) said it had become harder to find work in the past five years of Modi’s second term.
Modi was reported in March to be confident that the BJP and National Democratic Alliance (NDA) could secure a combined 400 seats, but analysts say this doesn’t matter as long as they stay close to the 303 seats they won in 2019.
“If you look at the progress and efficiencies he has brought from a governance perspective since winning the 303-seat parliamentary majority in 2019, it remains a very positive outlook for the Indian equity market,” said Malcolm Dawson, senior portfolio manager and head of emerging markets strategy at Global X ETFs.
This is breaking news, so check back later for more details.
