June 4, 2024, 6:10 AM
Analysis: BJP’s chances of victory remain strong, but dream of a supermajority in jeopardy
From CNN’s Jerome Taylor
People watch the latest vote count of India’s general election live on a big screen at the Bharatiya Janata Party offices in Bengaluru, India on June 4.
Idris Mohammed/AFP/Getty Images
Good morning to those reading this from the US. It’s 3:30pm in India and the counting of votes in the world’s largest election has been going on for seven and a half hours.
It’s still too early to tell — official results are in for just four of India’s 543-seat lower house of parliament — but some clear trends are emerging.
Current projections are that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will seek a third term in power, but the big question is, by how much?
Things are about to get interesting as India’s opposition parties are putting up a tougher fight than initially expected, which could spell trouble for the BJP.
The minimum number of seats to win an Indian election is 272. In 2019, the BJP won 303 seats, a comfortable majority.
But Modi and his right-wing Hindu nationalist party went into this year’s election confident that they were seeking a 400-seat supermajority, giving them an unstoppable mandate to implement potentially radical reforms and further their Hindu nationalist agenda, further alienating India from its secular foundations.
To achieve this, the BJP needs to win a landslide victory, retain all of its current seats and make inroads in areas it has struggled to win even after two terms as party leader.
But a coalition of parties led by India’s opposition party, the Indian National Congress, is performing better than many analysts and opinion pollsters had predicted.
The Election Commission of India began releasing provisional results online as vote counting progressed across the country, showing the BJP leading with 239 seats, making it by far the largest party.
But the BJP is leading with 98 seats, almost double the 52 it won in its 2019 defeat.
Though it is still early to tell, the BJP’s hopes of winning a supermajority appear to be in jeopardy. Even if Modi is likely to win a large enough majority to secure a third term, India’s opposition is far from exhausted.