Incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party has declared victory in India’s parliamentary elections.
The country’s people had “expressed their confidence in his ruling coalition for the third time in a row,” Modi wrote on the X platform on Tuesday evening.
After some of the votes are counted, his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is likely to become the strongest party again, but will lose its absolute majority in the lower house. This would mean that the country would have to rely on its two coalition partners to form a government.
It was considered certain that Modi could continue to rule for a third five-year term. Rahul Gandhi of the opposition Congress, however, 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 elections, 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 himself the goal of increasing his majority to more than 400 seats. Instead, the predictions suggest that the opposition camp has made surprising gains.
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.
