India has seen a close election after 10 long years, with very few seeing it coming. Most experts had written off this election as the exit polls predicted a landslide victory for the BJP. However, the Indian voter had other plans.
The final result tally of results is: The BJP has won 240 seats, where 272 are required to win a simple majority. So the saffron party is 32 seats short of that, but its alliance, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), which has won 292 seats, is comfortably over the half-way mark.
The BJP has won 36 percent of the votes, and it’s 45 percent for the NDA.
The opposition—the I.N.D.I.A. bloc—has won 233 seats; that was surprising considering the numbers that were predicted in the exit polls. Congress has won 99 seats; the Samajwadi Party won 37 seats; for the Trinamool Congress, 29 seats; and 22 seats have been won by the DMK.
That is a major turnaround for the opposition; some of these parties were decimated in the 2019 elections. So this was a comeback for them. Despite not getting a majority, their mood was celebratory. It might be a moral victory, but it is not enough to change the government.
On the other hand, in 2014, the BJP took India by storm; it swept to power with a majority of its own. In 2019, it did the unthinkable as it expanded its seats even more. But cut to 2024, things have changed as the BJP has lost ground in the Hindi heartland, and that is where the opposition has gained.
Key takeaways are here:
Modi returns, but with no majority; a third term is very rare in Indian elections, with only one prime minister—Jawaharlal Nehru—achieving it in the past. So Modi is joining an elite list. Of course, this time in a coalition, with the TDP having 16 seats and the JDU having 12 seats.
Divisions within the BJP are exposed as there have been a lot of pre-poll murmurs. Of the RSS being sidelined and of regional leaders being swapped out. There was discontent in the local ranks. These estimations cannot be confirmed, but these numbers will fuel that conversation again. Around 25 percent of the BJP’s candidates were turncoats. Chances are, they did affect the grassroots.
There was a revival for the Congress Party. It has taken almost ten years, from 44 seats in 2014 to 52 seats in 2019, to nearly double the tally to reach 99 seats. The Congress has always struggled in direct contests with the BJP, but not this time. In a straight contest between Congress and the BJP , the saffron party won 14 seats while the grand old party won eight. Another example is Telangana, with eight seats for the BJP and eight seats for Congress there. The third example is Karnataka, where the BJP won 17 seats but Congress held on for nine.This wasn’t the case in 2019, when the straight fight between Congress meant only the BJP’s victory, but that has changed in this election.
Regional parties emerged as kingmakers, with TMC winning 29 seats, seven more than the last election, while the SP won 37 seats, having won just five in 2019. Also, the TDP, which won three seats in 2019, has won 16 seats; plus, the party is forming the state government in Andhra Pradesh. The TDP’s support is key for Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Both Modi and Amit Shah called N. Chandrababu Naidu after the results came out.
Grassroots problems of last-mile delivery—perhaps the voters wanted more. Just look at rural India. The NDA lost 30 seats in the rural parts of the country, but the I.N.D.I.A. bloc gained 62.
The Ram Mandir dividend was largely absent. It was supposed to be the BJP’s centrepiece, but it may not have worked, as the BJP lost Faizabad, the constituency where Ram Mandir is located.
The BJP’s South push wasn’t quite a success; the prime minister spent a lot of time there, especially in Tamil Nadu, but it hasn’t delivered. However, the saffron party did open its account in Kerala.
Elections are all about making the right choices, and everyone expected this election to be a referendum on the NDA’s 10-year rule, but the campaign veered away from it. There was a lot of focus on the Congress manifesto, which emphasised wealth re-distribution and emotional appeals. Perhaps even that hurts the NDA. Having said that, returning to power after 10 years is not an easy thing, especially in a country as diverse as India. Of course, this is just the first chapter.
The views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.
