New Delhi, India Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) suffered heavy defeats in key states and lost its majority in parliament across the country, marking a dramatic shift in the political landscape that the party has dominated for the past decade.
The BJP has easily become the country’s largest party in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Indian parliament. But after six weeks of vote counting in India’s general election, the party’s performance fell far short of its 2014 and 2019 levels.
Unlike the previous two elections, in which the BJP won a landslide majority on its own out of the 543 seats, it was expected to finish with 240 seats this time. The midpoint is 272 seats.
In contrast, the opposition Indian Union, led by the Indian National Congress party, was projected to win more than 200 seats, significantly more than exit polls had predicted, which were released on June 1, at the end of the final phase of India’s election cycle, projecting the BJP to surpass its 2019 win of 303 seats.
Modi and his party still have a good chance of forming India’s next government, but they will need the support of their allies to get past the 272 seats. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition of the BJP and its allies had been expected to win around 282 seats.
“India will probably have an NDA government, but the BJP will not have a majority on its own and coalition politics will come into full swing,” said Sandeep Shastri, national coordinator of the Lokniti Network, a research programme at the New Delhi-based Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS).
On Tuesday evening, in his first comments since the results were announced, Prime Minister Modi claimed victory for the NDA coalition. “We will form the next government,” he told thousands of supporters at the BJP headquarters in New Delhi.
The people have placed their faith in the NDA for three consecutive terms, which is a feat in the history of India.
I salute Janata Janardhan for this affection and assure you that we will continue the good work done in the last decade and continue to realise the aspirations of …
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) June 4, 2024
But analysts say the results raise questions about the BJP’s strategy. Throughout India’s drawn-out election campaign, Modi, a charismatic and polarizing prime minister, has increasingly used fear-mongering around a plot by the opposition to hand over the country’s resources to Muslims at the expense of the Hindu majority. Meanwhile, the opposition has sought to corner his government on its economic record. India is the world’s fastest-growing major economy, but pre-election polls showed voters saying high inflation and unemployment were their main concerns.
The BJP’s election slogan, “More than 400 this time,” sets out a target of winning 400 seats for the coalition and 370 seats for the BJP itself.
Modi biographer Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay said the remarks had a “tone of hubris” at a time when many Indians were facing rising prices, unemployment and widening income inequality that was worse than under British colonial rule. The result, says political analyst and columnist Asim Ali, was “a BJP sleepwalking through life.”
“Today, Modi has lost face. He is not an ‘unbeatable man’ and his aura of invincibility is no more,” Ali said.
Establishment of the next government
In some ways, the election results are reminiscent of 2004, when the BJP government led by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was widely predicted to win with overwhelming support in exit polls.
Instead, the Indian National Congress party narrowly beat the BJP and formed a government with its allies.
But 2024 is not 2004. Despite the setbacks, the BJP remains by far the largest party in parliament and is in a position to form the next government with the NDA alliance. The main opposition Indian National Congress is expected to win around 100 seats, less than half the number the BJP is expected to win when all the votes are counted.
Still, two regional parties hold the key to the prime ministerial seat: Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal United in Bihar and Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party in southern Andhra Pradesh. The TDP won 16 seats and the JD(U) 12. Both parties had previously partnered in coalitions with the Indian National Congress.
The BJP made notable gains in southern India, particularly in Kerala, where it won its first Lok Sabha seat, but suffered heavy defeats in the Hindi-speaking central states where it had won landslide victories in the last election, taking a hit to its overall vote total.
In Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state and a crucial deciding factor in national politics, a Hindu nationalist party was defeated in Faizabad constituency, home to a controversial Ram temple built on the ruins of the 16th-century Babri Masjid that Modi consecrated in January.
The Ram temple dedication ceremony, spearheaded by Modi, was at the forefront of the BJP’s campaign to mobilise Hindu voters. The party also lost the key seat of Amethi, where Union Minister Smriti Irani had been defeated by Gandhi heir Rahul Gandhi in 2019 by 55,000 votes. This year, Gandhi contested from the neighbouring Rai Bahri constituency and won by more than double the margin that Modi had won in Varanasi, also in Uttar Pradesh.
Overall, the BJP won just 33 of Uttar Pradesh’s 80 seats, a sharp drop from the 62 it won in 2019 and the 71 it won in 2014. The regional Samajwadi Party, part of the opposition Indian Union, won 37 seats, while the Indian National Congress won six.
The BJP also suffered losses in Maharashtra, India’s second most politically significant state, where the vote count showed the U.K. leading in 30 of the state’s 48 seats. Only Uttar Pradesh had more seats, with 80. In 2019, the BJP alone won 23 seats in Maharashtra, while its alliance won a further 18.
In addition to Maharashtra, the BJP’s seat tally has fallen compared to 2019 in Haryana, Rajasthan and Punjab, three other states that are the epicenter of India’s agrarian crisis and where large-scale farm protests are taking place. The BJP rules Haryana and Rajasthan.
Parliamentary Celebration
As the first signs began to trickle in on Tuesday morning, Congress supporters swarmed the party’s headquarters in New Delhi, wearing white T-shirts with a picture of Rahul Gandhi emblazoned on the back, waving party flags and glued to giant screens broadcasting the results live.
“Now at least Indians can raise their voice against the cruel BJP that has ruled us for the last 10 years. More seats means a stronger voice and a stronger opposition,” said Suresh Verma, a supporter of the Indian National Congress party.
Changes to the composition of India’s next parliament could also affect how laws are passed, with critics accusing the BJP government of ramming laws through parliament without debate or discussion.
It’s not going to be easy anymore, Shastri said. “For the BJP, the fight in the Congress is obviously going to be much tougher,” he said.
Beyond Parliament, analysts say the weakening of its power could affect the functioning of other Indian democratic institutions, and critics accuse the BJP of exploiting it for partisan politics.
“In India, under the BJP government, the system has collapsed due to majority rule. Power is centralised at the top and India needs these coalition governments for its democracy to survive,” Ali said.
What’s the BJP’s next move?
Once those results settle in, the BJP will introspect and its key duo of Modi and Amit Shah, India’s Home Minister, who is widely seen as the prime minister’s deputy, will face tougher questions. “Questions will arise about what image Modi will project as leader of the coalition, which may lead him to listen more to leaders outside the BJP,” said Shastri of CSDS.
“The BJP has misread the situation,” said Ali, the political analyst, suggesting that Modi’s circle of yes-men may have taken the party by surprise. “It’s as if the king was only told what he wanted to hear,” he said. “Feedback mechanisms and decentralisation of power are really important for the BJP.”
Under Modi’s BJP-majority government over the past decade, India has fallen on several democratic indicators amid accusations of crackdown on dissent, political opposition and the media. Modi has not spoken at a press conference as prime minister for the past decade.
With coalition partners keeping the BJP in check, “it will give Indian civil society and critics of the government some breathing room,” biographer Mukhopadhyay said.
For many Indian Muslims, the outcome also comes as a relief.
Akbar Khan, a 33-year-old garbage picker, said he was overjoyed as he watched the results from his shed in northeast New Delhi. Though the BJP is currently ahead in every constituency in Delhi, Khan said “people took to the streets and fought this election against the BJP.” [incumbent] government”.
“People from economically backward castes and classes are extremely resentful of Modi and his divisive politics have not produced any results in their kitchens,” said Khan, who also works with waste collection communities in states like Bihar and Jharkhand.
As a Muslim, Khan said he was outraged when, during his re-election campaign, Prime Minister Modi described Muslims as “infiltrators” and “people who have many children”.
“Indians needed to vote against this hatred by Prime Minister Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party,” he said.
