C T Online Desk: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party finished the Lok Sabha elections with a tally of 240 seats, 32 short of the majority mark of 272 in the 543-parliament, while main opposition Congress 99 after the Election Commission declared the results of all the seats late last night.
While the Lok Sabha has 543 members, counting was held for 542 seats after BJP’s candidate was elected unopposed.
The results left Modi on the cusp of forming the government for a third consecutive term and needing the support of allies in the party-led National Democratic Alliance(NDA) for government formation, a far cry from the 303 and 282 seats it had won in 2019 and 2014 national elections respectively to have a majority on its own.
This is the first time 73-year-old Modi will be the PM without a majority of the BJP since he assumed office for the first time in May 2014.
With support from BJP’s key allies N Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party and Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal(United), which won 12 and 16 seats in Andhra Pradesh and Bihar respectively, and other alliance partners, NDA appeared to be on course to bag around 290 seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha.
In a speech at the BJP headquarters soon after the final picture became clear last evening Modi said his third term in power would see big decisions and key emphasis would be on uprooting corruption.
“The fight against corruption is becoming tougher by the day. Corruption is being shamelessly glorified for political interest. In our third term, NDA will focus a lot on rooting out corruption of all kinds,” Modi said.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge termed the poll outcome as the “victory of the people and that of democracy.”
“We had been saying that this battle is between the public and Modi…This mandate is against Modi. This is his political and moral defeat. It is a big defeat for a person who sought votes in his own name. He has suffered a moral setback,” Kharge told reporters at the AICC headquarters flanked by Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi after the good showing by the Congress.
The elections highlighted the revival of the main opposition Congress Party under Rahul Gandhi, and Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh led by Akhilesh Yadav as the two parties fought together to checkmate BJP in the most crucial state of Uttar Pradesh.
The trends and results did not throw up a landslide victory the BJP-led NDA had hoped for and what was projected by the exit polls. More than 640 million votes are to be counted in the world’s largest democratic exercise.
In the last 10 years, BJP’s big parliamentary majority and shrinking opposition in the Lok Sabha made its allies mostly redundant. But this time around, allies will matter more than ever.
At the heart of Congress’ success in this election were the major reverses suffered by BJP in Hindi heartland states including UP, Rajasthan and Haryana which has a total of 200 seats.
If in UP, it was SP chief Akhilesh Yadav who kept BJP at bay by bagging an unprecedented 37 seats out of the total of 80, in West Bengal it was Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress which shut out the saffron party by winning 29 of the total of 42 seats in West Bengal, higher than its 22 in 2019. BJP, which had 18 seats in the last Lok Sabha election in Bengal, got 12 seats this time.
In UP, BJP won 33 seats as against 62 in 2019 and SP’s numbers went up, largely attributed to three factors – massive consolidation of Muslim votes in favour of SP and widespread discontent with the BJP government over joblessness and price rise
