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Bureau Report + Agencies
05-06-2024
NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led coalition is leading as India counts votes but trends so far suggest the BJP might fall short of a majority on its own as a united opposition led by the Indian National Congress makes gains.
The mammoth seven-phase election, the world’s largest democratic exercise began on April 19 and ended on Saturday.
A party or coalition needs 272 seats to cross the majority mark in the 543-member Lok Sabha, the lower house of India’s parliament. Exit polls said Modi could return to power for a third consecutive term.
The Election Commission says a record-breaking 642 million voters cast their ballots in the staggered election as it dismissed opposition concerns over how the votes would be counted.
Samajwadi Party emerges as largest in Uttar Pradesh
The Samajwadi party, which is part of the opposition INDIA alliance, has emerged as the largest in India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, in a blow to the BJP’s dominance.
Jagdeep Chhokar, of the electoral watchdog Association for Democratic Reforms, says the party’s result was “significant,” albeit not unprecedented.
“This has happened in the past when Mulayam Singh Yadav, Akhilesh Yadav’s father, was the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh,” Chhokar told media, referring to a post Mulayam held between 2003 and 2007.
“His party had a significant number of MPs” and Mulayam was even considered to be a potential candidate for the post of prime minister.
“Those were the heydays, now let’s see how this [election] plays out,” Chhokar added.
BJP without its own majority an ‘uncharted territory’
If the BJP doesn’t win a majority on its own, it could “be heavily dependent on the goodwill of its allies, which makes them critical players who we can expect will extract their pound of flesh, both in terms of policymaking as well as government formation,” said Milan Vaishnav, director of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“This would be truly, you know, uncharted territory, both for Indians as well as for the prime minister,” Vaishnav told the Associated Press.
Since coming to power in 2014, Modi’s BJP has governed in a coalition government but has always had a majority on its own.
Congress leading in violence-hit Manipur state
The Congress is leading on the two Lok Sabha seats in the northeastern state, with the BJP trailing on one seat, and its ally the regional Naga People’s Front party on the other.
Congress candidate from the Outer Manipur seat is ahead by nearly 76,000 votes, while from the Inner Manipur, Congress candidate leads by around 108,000 votes.
The state government lead by the BJP has been criticised for failing to control ethnic violence in the state of 3.2 million people.
Jailed politician set to win Kashmir seat after rival concedes
Sheikh Abdul Rashid from the northern Baramulla constituency, who has been in New Delhi’s Tihar Jail since 2019 in a terror funding case, is poised to win after his rival conceded defeat although the official’s results have not been announced, Rashid’s opponent and former chief minister of Indian-administered Kashmir, Omar Abdullah, conceded defeat in a post on X.
