Incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party has declared victory in India’s parliamentary elections, but with most votes counted, his Hindu nationalist party will lose its parliamentary majority, according to preliminary results.
The country’s people had “expressed their confidence in his ruling coalition for the third time in a row,” Modi wrote on social media platform X on Tuesday evening.
Although Modi’s Bharatiya Janata (Indian People’s Party) (BJP) received the most votes, it will have to rely on its two coalition partners to form a government.
It is considered certain that Modi can continue to rule for a third five-year term, but Rahul Gandhi of the opposition Congress did not rule out talks with two of Modi’s coalition partners.
The stock market suffered its biggest losses in four years in response to Modi’s setback.
Modi’s BJP alone had won 303 seats in the previous election, well above the 272-seat majority needed to govern. Five years ago, it and its allies won 353 seats, a huge majority.
Before these elections, Modi had set the bar high for election campaign success. He predicted that the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition, led by Modi’s BJP, would win more than 400 of the 543 seats in the lower house and expand its majority.
Instead, the forecasts suggest that the opposition camp has made surprising gains, although final figures have not yet been released.
Nevertheless, Modi was expected to become only the second prime minister in the country’s history to rule for three consecutive terms, after Jawaharlal Nehru, the country’s first.
Because India is the most populous country in the world, the elections to the Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament, were the largest elections in the world, lasting about six weeks.
The BJP has taken a strong Hindu nationalist stance. Critics and the opposition fear that if he is re-elected, he could try to change the South Asian country’s constitution to further consolidate this course.
The opposition camp has repeatedly warned of an erosion of democracy under Modi.
