Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi gestures when arriving at the headquarters of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in New Delhi, India, on June 4, 2024.
Adnan Abidi | Reuters
Observers say India’s election results are a huge political blow to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ruling party and have major implications for how he plans to govern the country.
Modi did not win the landslide victory widely predicted by exit polls. Instead, he will enter his third term with a much weaker mandate than initially anticipated.
His Bharatiya Janata Party lost dozens of seats, bringing its projected total to 240, failing to gain an outright majority in India’s lower house of parliament.
This is a marked difference from the resounding victories in 2014 and 2019, when the BJP secured a majority on its own by winning 282 and 303 seats respectively.
In a brave gesture, Modi called his election victory “the third victory of a sitting government after 1962” while speaking at the Bharatiya Janata Party headquarters in New Delhi on Tuesday.
He added that this would be “a new ‘golden chapter’ in India’s development”.
But the consequences are more complicated for Modi, who for the first time in his decade-long rule will be forced to rely on coalition partners — some of whom may not share his economic or political agenda for the country.
“We are in uncharted territory,” Neelanjan Sircar, senior fellow at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, said on Wednesday.
“We have never seen the Modi government have to act together. We know the party has been focused on decisive action,” Sirka told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia.”
“When you lead a coalition, can they adjust in the way that the party and the leader need?” he said, adding that Modi was likely to have “uneasy relationships” with his coalition partners.
Hindu nationalism
India’s main opposition party, the once dominant Indian National Congress, won 99 seats, a sharp shift from the 52 seats it won in 2019.
The opposition alliance, along with its coalition partner the Indian National Alliance for Inclusive Development (INDIA), secured 233 seats, a much better result than expected.
Veteran investor David Roach called the election results “karma,” adding that Modi was destined to fail.
“It’s all about his face, but he’s lost face in the core northern states,” Roach, president and global strategist at Independent Strategies, told CNBC’s “On the Street.” “That’s very important because it tells you something is wrong. .
This showed that Modi’s campaign on Hindu nationalism was not working in “Hindu nationalist areas”, he said, adding that he hoped Modi would now govern in the interest of economic reforms.
The BJP’s performance in Uttar Pradesh, which has been a bastion of the ruling party for the past decade, was one of the most shocking in this election. The party suffered some high-profile losses here, with BJP heavyweights like Smriti Irani losing their seats.
In another setback in Ayodhya, the BJP lost a key constituency in Faizabad just months after Modi inaugurated a new Ram temple. The controversial temple was built on the site of a mosque that was razed to the ground by Hindu extremists, a move that analysts believe is intended to galvanize the Hindu voter base.
Sirkar said that in the previous two elections, the BJP had indeed cordoned off India’s “Hindi heartland”.
This time it suffered very significant losses in three of the states – Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan – analysts added, saying this was mainly due to the Modi government’s overreach .
On the eve of the elections, “we have two chief ministers arrested. We have many other political opposition leaders facing investigative agencies… In some places, people will say they are worried about the constitution,” Sirkar noted. It added that the government had crossed several “red lines.”
Critics point to India’s continued crackdown on minority rights and civil society under Modi’s strongman rule as signs of democratic backsliding.
A ‘humble moment’
Modi’s popularity has continued ahead of the election despite India’s economic problems of high youth unemployment, inflation and income inequality.
Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center, posted on X that while Modi has retained his charm, he has lost “the aura of electoral omnipotence.”
“This has been an important part of who he is as a leader for a long time,” he said, adding that it was a “humbling moment” for both the BJP and Modi.
On Tuesday, as results were yet to come in, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said the results were a victory for the Indian people and democracy.
“This is a fight to save the constitution,” he told a news conference in New Delhi, adding that it sent a strong message to Modi that “people don’t like the way you are running the country.”
Roach said the election results were “good news” for Indian democracy overall.
“You want India to be a true democracy, not based on populist dreams, which ultimately further damages economic performance.”