The hurly-burly is done. This year’s battle for India’s Lok Sabha, the world’s largest electoral exercise ever, was a story of vaulting ambition even by the high standards of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In what seemed like an open dare for his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), he set for it the target of a two-thirds majority in Parliament: 370 seats.
Sufficient not just to make ‘anti-incumbency’ history, but also emboss our political arena with the BJP’s seal of dominance. In Modi’s view, this aim of 370 stood for “unity,” a reference to Kashmir’s integration by scrapping Article 370. In the opposition’s view, it reflected a BJP desire to alter the Constitution in line with its saffron ideology.
At the end of an election marked by sound and fury over quota carve-ups, minority decoys and other ploys, Modi’s party fell short of the halfway mark, winning a likely tally of about 240 seats in the 18th Lok Sabha. This descent from its 303-seat majority of 2019 has left it dependent on allies for power, a slide reflected in a stock-market crash on Tuesday.
As reversals go, its significance lay in its surprise. While a BJP ouster from office was always seen as a tail-end possibility at most, few foresaw how BJP losses in Uttar Pradesh (UP)—with only modest gains elsewhere—would loosen its tight grip on power and spell a novel prospect for Modi’s party: Its rule will now be subject to compulsions of coalition politics.
The irony for the BJP is that it more or less retained its 2019 vote share of about 37%. Given an expanded base of 642 million voters and Modi’s own appeal as a leader, it’s valid to argue that he has set yet another record as a vote catcher. Yet, the more dramatic part of this election lay elsewhere, with the BJP’s archrival Congress hauling itself up from below a fifth of all votes polled five years ago to about 21% now.
Granted, this is more of a claw-back than a revival, but with around 100 seats of its own and a sizeable haul achieved by its INDIA allies, it is back in the reckoning. If it seemed odd that the BJP aimed almost all its attacks at the Congress, it’s now clear why. The older party’s upswing is a sign of its sustained relevance as a BJP counter-force.
The same can be said of the Samajwadi Party in UP, Trinamool in West Bengal and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu, all of which scored notable wins as voluble voices against the BJP, which must wonder if its quest for a two-thirds majority cost it the support of Hindi-belt voters unsure of its respect for basic rights—to affirmative- action benefits, specifically—assured by the Constitution.
While opposition parties joining hands have not been able to dislodge the BJP from power at the Centre, the latter cannot boast of a clear mandate for its agenda either.
What does that imply? Both the Janata Dal-United and Telugu Desam Party, whose support is critical to the BJP, have a glaring record of playing both sides of the political divide and may plausibly want to drive a hard bargain as part of a ruling National Democratic Alliance coalition. Perhaps the Vajpayee era could serve as a model.
Back then, to keep allies on board and economic reforms in focus, the BJP kept three controversial aspects of its agenda aside. Two of those, a Ram temple in Ayodhya and the end of Article 370, have already been done. The third concerns a uniform civil code, an idea best kept on hold till we have a proposal worthy of a national consensus. After all, the unacknowledged victor of 2024 has arguably been the Constitution, our bond of citizenship.
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