Narendra Modi set a lofty goal for an election he hoped would send him to a third term as prime minister that would define his legacy: winning a majority so staggering that his party would cast itself as the only plausible option to lead India in the coming years.
To achieve this, his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wanted to expand its deep support in the so-called cow belt in India’s densely populated north, while also making significant inroads in the south of the country, which is more resistant to the Hindu views of the side. -nationalist agenda.
But little went to plan for Modi when the election results came in on Tuesday. His party not only fell far short of its target of winning more than 400 of the 543 seats in parliament. It took such a steep plunge – losing more than 60 seats – that it no longer had a majority in Parliament.
To stay in power, the powerful Modi is now forced to do something that does not come naturally to him: working with others, in a political coalition. That alliance, known as the National Democratic Alliance, or NDA, will face a revived political opposition led by the Congress Party, which has significantly improved its performance since the previous election in 2019.
Modi’s NDA alliance lost a large part of their territory in these elections
The BJP’s losses spread across the country, from Maharashtra in the west to West Bengal in the east. But Modi’s biggest setback came where he was least expected: in the north, where his party was well entrenched and the Hindu nationalist ideology had strong support.
It seemed that some of Mr. Modi’s tactics in this region had backfired, perhaps because his party’s candidates there were seen as incumbents with little to offer after a decade in power. However, these losses were partly offset by gains in parts of the south, where the BJP – as a newcomer that has had little foothold there in the past – found a better reception of its messages.
In Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state with 240 million inhabitants, the BJP won only 33 seats, compared to 62 in the previous elections. It was in this northern state that Mr Modi inaugurated the lavish Ram Temple in January, seen as one of his greatest sacrifices to his Hindu base. But the BJP’s chest-chewing over its ‘Hindu-first’ policy has turned off many lower-caste voters who were more concerned about issues like unemployment, inflation and social justice.
One of the biggest surprises took place in the city of Ayodhya, the location of the Ram Temple. The BJP lost the seat in the city and other seats in the adjoining districts.
In the key state of Maharashtra, home to India’s business and entertainment capital Mumbai, the BJP won just nine seats, down from 23 in the last election. The party’s coalition partners suffered even greater losses.
The vote was seen as a judgment on the BJP’s heavy-handed ways of reshaping the state’s political map. The BJP had used pressure from government agencies and allurements of money and power to split the state’s two largest parties. A faction within each of the two split parties subsequently joined the BJP. However, this move backfired: in what was seen as a sympathy vote, the original factions of the two parties outpaced the BJP allies by large margins.
The BJP had good news: it continued to expand its support in the south, where it struggled to gain a lasting foothold. It won a seat for the first time in the Left-dominated state of Kerala and several seats in Telangana state.
The NDA alliance gained ground in the east and south
The party’s most impressive gains came in the eastern state of Odisha. That state is part of the ‘tribal belt’, which runs through central India and is the only part of the country where the BJP has communal support. The relatively poor communities have been skillfully targeted by the BJP’s Hindu-centric politics and welfare schemes.
But the party’s progress in eastern and southern India was far from sufficient to make up for its losses in the north. Now that Mr. Modi has been deprived of the landslide victory he sought, the country will see how he responds. Some of the tensions in Indian democracy could be resolved if Mr. Modi is forced to consult with coalition partners who can curb his more authoritarian tendencies. Or he could act more fiercely than ever as he worries he will lose even more ground to renewed opposition.
