INDIA blooms, lotus wilts
Aditi Tandon
New Delhi, June 4
The 2024 national election results defied exit poll predictions on Tuesday to humble the ruling BJP, which emerged as the single largest party but fell significantly short of a simple majority — 272 — in the 543-member Lok Sabha, heralding the return of the coalition era.
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At midnight, the BJP had either won or was leading in 240 seats (32 short of a majority) while the ruling NDA was at 293 (it had crossed the 272 majority victory mark). However, the performance of the NDA was below the much-touted Prime Minister’s “400 paar” claims.
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The fight against corruption is becoming tougher by the day. In the third term, the NDA will focus a lot on rooting out corruption. A strong India will be a strong pillar of a strong world. — Narendra Modi, Prime Minister
This is the victory of people and democracy. We had been saying that this was a fight between the people and Modi. We humbly accept the people’s mandate. — Mallikarjun Kharge, Cong President
With the TDP pledging support to the BJP, Prime Minister Narendra Modi termed the verdict “historic” and a “victory of the world’s largest democracy”, even as he signalled preparations to stake claim to form the government for the third straight term.
BJP tally shrinks from 303 in 2019 to 240, much lower than the exit poll predictions; coalition politics set to return as party falls short of simple majority
Suffers stunning losses in UP, Maharashtra, Bengal, fares below expectations in Karnataka and R’sthan as INDIA bloc halts Modi run by securing 234 seats
PM terms verdict historic, says it’s the first time since 1962 that an incumbent government has been repeated for the third consecutive term
“This is the first time since 1962 that an incumbent government has been repeated for a third time,” Modi said as stunning losses in the Hindi heartland states of UP, Rajasthan and Haryana took the sheen off his day and he won on Tuesday but not quite. The opposition INDIA bloc on the other hand posted unexpected gains, clocking 234 seats. The PM flagged the Opposition tally to boost the morale of the party cadres and said, “Even after they came together, the opposition parties could not win the number of seats the BJP won on its own.”
States where BJP lost the plot
UP (80 seats): Down from 62 seats in 2019 to 33*
Haryana (10): Reduced to 5 seats from 10 seats in 2019
Rajasthan (25): Seats come down from 25 to 14
West Bengal (42): Shrinks to 8 constituencies from 18
Maharashtra (48): Limited to 10 seats from earlier 23
Bihar (40): NDA tally down to 30 from 39 in 2019
Karnataka (28): BJP reduced to 17 from previous 25 seats
Chandigarh (1): Loses lone seat to Congress (* leads/wins)
States where it salvaged pride
Odisha (up from 8 LS seats in 2019 to 19)
Telangana (from 4 seats in 2019 to 8)
Kerala (Opens account with one seat)
Andhra Pradesh (3 seats against zero in 2019)
Repeats 2019 performances with sweeps in Delhi, Himachal, Uttarakhand, MP, Gujarat (with one loss out of 26 seats)
PM aide Nripendra Mishra’s son loses
Saket Mishra, the BJP candidate from UP’s Shrawasti constituency, lost to Samajwadi Party (SP) candidate Ram Shiromani Verma, who secured victory by a margin of 76,673 votes. Saket is son of Nripendra Misra, the adviser to PM Modi.
The PM’s conventional post-result thanksgiving speech was, however, met with dimmer-than-usual applause on Tuesday, much along the expected lines and the BJP headquarters did not wear the winning look it may have planned for.
In UP, INDIA ally Samajwadi Party, led by former state Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, surfaced as the single largest party and won or was leading in 37 of the state’s 80 segments as against the BJP’s 33. The Congress also posted gains — six leads against just one win (Rae Bareli) in 2019. Nationally, the Congress was at 99 leads late on Tuesday night, improving over its dismal 2014 and 2019 tallies of 44 and 52 LS seats, respectively. The party will finally get recognition for the Leader of the Opposition position in the Lok Sabha for which it needs 10 per cent strength of the House.
The BJP for its part lost 29 seats in India’s largest state UP having won 62 in the state in 2019 and 71 in 2014. This despite the Union Home Minister personally leading the strategy. Initial indications suggested that the BJP’s decision to renominate majority UP MPs boomeranged. Nationally, the BJP dropped 132 MPs of the 303 who had won in 2019 — 43 per cent of all MPs. However, in UP, the BJP retained 55 of its 62 MPs and paid the price of anti-incumbency among other factors today. Issues of bread and butter appeared to trump saffron narratives dominated by the Ram Temple, abrogation of Article 370, the Citizenship Amendment Act, serial invocation of infiltrators and “mangalsutra” among other things, with the BJP losing seats to the Congress in both Rajasthan and Haryana, which it had swept in 2019.
In Rajasthan, the BJP posted 14 leads and the Congress eight. In Haryana, both parties bagged five seats each among the state’s 10 constituencies in a development that would boost the opposition Congress ahead of state Assembly poll later this year. The BJP, however, swept Delhi, Himachal, Uttarakhand and Madhya Pradesh. It just lost a seat each in Chhattisgarh and Gujarat.
Southern and eastern India brought big cheer to the saffron camp. Barring Karnataka, where it lost eight seats compared to 2019 and the Congress gained eight, the BJP posted impressive gains across southern and eastern India.
It ended its electoral drought in Kerala with actor Suresh Gopi becoming the first BJP MP in the state dominated by the Left and the Congress.
Gopi trounced his nearest CPI rival by over 74,000 votes, helping the BJP conquer the last frontier in the South.
In Tamil Nadu, however, INDIA parties, led by the DMK, swept the election in a repeat of the 2019 performance and the BJP, despite a massive personal push by PM Modi, failed to win a single seat.
The ruling party, however, swept the Odisha LS poll with 19 leads of 21, decimating the BJD to just one seat as against 12 it had bagged last time. Even in the Odisha Assembly, the BJP was on course to form the government having crossed a simple majority in the 147-member House in leads that consolidated by Tuesday night.
In Andhra, too, the BJP, as part of the NDA with the TDP and the Jana Sena, is all set to form the next government, besides leading in 21 of the state’s 25 LS seats. The YSRCP, the dominant state party, stood humbled. The BJP also managed to post an impressive performance in Telangana, raising its LS seat tally from four to eight. The Congress also took eight leads in Telangana with the BRS biting the dust and Asaduddin Owaisi of the AIMIM being the sole party candidate to save his Hyderabad seat. But broadly the results, that mirrored clear dejection with the government and reconsolidation of lost voter bases — SCs, STs and OBCs — of opposition parties, including the SP in UP, shocked BJP leaders who were hoping to win big today.
The trends also bring into question the structure of hierarchies in the BJP, which is ruled by PM Modi and his confidante Union Home Minister Amit Shah with an iron fist.
For the first time since he became the Gujarat CM in 2001, he has been unable to lead the BJP to a full majority and would need to depend on NDA allies to run the government. This could mean much compromise though the PM today clearly said in his third term the government “will take historic, massive decisions and that is Modi’s guarantee”.
Overall the BJP would need to introspect the losses as it had gone into the 2024 poll on “Modi’s guarantees”, Modi’s brand and Modi’s name.
The PM’s own depleted victory margin in Varanasi — 1,52,513 votes — as against over four lakh in 2019 would worry the party, especially when BJP’s Indore candidate Shankar Lalwani bagged a winning margin of over 11 lakh votes, perhaps the highest ever in Indian history; former MP CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan had a victory margin of over 8.21 lakh votes in Vidisha and Amit Shah in Gandhinagar had a lead of over 7,44,716 votes.
