“After 1962, a government has won a third consecutive term in the country… we swept Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh… BJP has won more seats than the entire opposition alliance together” – this is how Prime Minister Narendra Modi described his 2024 win.
The BJP’s tally may have dropped from 303 seats in 2019 to 240 seats in 2024, but the pre-poll National Democratic Alliance has crossed the majority mark of 272 seats comfortably. The BJP has retained its vote share of nearly 37% from 2019. A third consecutive term as PM for Modi is historic — Nehru had won three terms in the near absence of any opposition and amid fervour of the country’s independence. Modi has achieved this with two dozen opposition parties led by the Congress and virtually all the regional forces in an alliance against him.
Rahul Gandhi and Mamata Banerjee still tell Modi that he does not have the ‘moral right’ to be PM again. BJP leaders counter this saying that the BJP itself has more seats than the entire INDIA bloc put together. The Congress hasn’t crossed 100 after a decade of struggle, and it had never touched 240 seats (like the BJP) in 2004 and 2009 when it ran coalition governments. Modi said he would work with new energy and enthusiasm for the people in his third term.
But Modi does have a new challenge and a wake-up call for his party — running a coalition government where the BJP is dependent on key allies like the TDP with 16 seats and the JD-U with 12 seats for running his government in the third term. Both these allies, Chandrababu Naidu and Nitish Kumar, have snapped ties with the BJP in the past and were the last to rejoin the NDA this time just few months before the Lok Sabha elections. The PM specifically credited Chandrababu Naidu and Nitish Kumar for leading the wins for NDA in their states.
Modi has always run full-majority BJP governments – as Chief Minister of Gujarat and as the Prime Minister since 2014 when BJP under him won 282 seats. His USP has been one of being a decisive leader who has questioned the ‘remote-controlled’ government run by Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister. The opposition would now be keen to put the shoe on the other foot and Modi may have to put in the extra effort to keep TDP and JD-U in good humour. A more all-encompassing approach of the Atal Bihari Vajyapee era may be on display now. There is also a question mark if BJP can now roll out its mega agenda for a third term – namely the Uniform Civil Code and One Nation-One Election.
BJP leaders say they have other allies too – Chirag Paswan with five seats and Eknath Shinde with seven seats, and other allies like HAM, JDS, AGP and Janasena with a seat or two apiece.
The fact remains that Modi is a leader with high credibility, whose word is taken as gospel truth deep inside rural India, and whom the people trust to solve their problems. There is no opposition leader even close to that cult in India right now, and that is why Modi is the “lambi race ka ghoda”, as a top BJP leader described.
REASONS WHY MODI WINS
A strong leader with a big vision, someone who is enjoying unquestioned women voter support, a pro-poor image because of bringing them benefits like rations, a proud Hindu, and a political mastermind who can turn the tables on the opposition with one speech like on Muslim reservation — travelling on the ground for almost a month, these are the five reasons I found people telling me why they would be choosing Modi again as the Prime Minister.
These discounted the opposition’s claim that Modi faced anti-incumbency after 10 years in office.
Many ascribed the 2019 win to the Balakot air-strike in Pakistan by India post the terror attack in Pulwama. What many forget that while this buttressed the strong image of the Prime Minister who can take unconventional steps to safeguard the country and under whose reign no major terror strike happened in the metros and our cities, the truth remains that a foundation of that win had already been laid by the pro-poor steps since 2014 by taking key benefits to the last-mile woman.
Be it the PM Awas Yojana, toilets, electricity, drinking water or gas cylinders, and most importantly free ration — Modi is seen on the ground as a saviour of the poor, especially women.
“Jisne humein ration diya, bhookhe marne se bachaya, usko vote kyun na dein (why would we not vote for a person who sent us free rations and did not let us starve),” a group of rural women told me last month.
Extending the free ration scheme till 2029 and a big cut in the LPG cylinder prices before the Lok Sabha elections proved to be big moves as it only consolidated Modi’s women vote.
Some women in a village in eastern Rajasthan told me that they were earlier upset over inflation, but realised that Modi had solved their concern.
Village after village, we found that the ration scheme had won over loyal women voters who were not even willing to believe the Congress’s big promise that it will give one woman in every household Rs 1 lakh a year. There was little resonance on the ground of the Congress promise, and many did not even believe it.
While the Congress won states like Karnataka and Telangana on the back of cash doles for women, the factor seemed to have failed when it was the key question of making Modi the next PM or not.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Monday said a record number of 312 million voters exercised their franchise in these elections.
MAZBOOT SARKAR
Modi’s message — that he has been able to take big steps as he had a strong full-majority government – worked in many states, but failed to bring desires results in states like Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Haryana
“Mazboot sarkar honi chahiye, inke jaise mazboot neta hona chahiye, jo kahe woh kare (there should be a strong government, a strong leader, who should do what he says),” said a group of on-lookers to News18 in Ahmedabad as the PM came to vote there last month.
Across states, this was a common theme in these elections — people saw Modi as a leader who had made promises to abrogate Article 370 in J&K, build the Ram Temple and bring in the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) law, and he had delivered.
There was in fact a lot of anticipation on what Modi would do next if he gets a third term — the Uniform Civil Code (UCC), a one- nation-one-election, and there was talk also of getting back Pakistan-Occupied-Kashmir (POK).
“Under Modi, kuch bhi ho sakta hai (anything is possible). Who had thought Article 370 could be abrogated? So, why can’t PoK takeover not happen…Modi has promised big things will be done in the third term,” a group of villagers near Varanasi told News18.
“This country has seen an era of family-run party government, coalition-run party government and now a full-majority strong BJP government. People have analysed that the BJP’s model has the best performance,” Modi told Network 18 in an interview 10 days ago.
WEARING HINDUISM ON HIS SLEEVE
On the ground, Hindus see Modi as “their leader”, given he is an unabashed believer in the region, wears it on his sleeve and has shown action by transforming iconic Hindu pilgrimage sites like Ayodhya, Kashi Vishwanath in Varanasi and the Mahakaleshwar Temple in Ujjain.
Modi’s images from Kanyakumari at the end of the campaign, clad in saffron and his forehead smeared with tilak-chandan, reinforced his message that was first sent through the Pran Pratishtha ceremony of the Ram Temple on January 22 this year.
The Congress’s vociferous objection to PM’s meditation trip to the Swami Vivekanada Rock memorial only served as a reminder of this to the electorate in the end of the campaign.
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