Why Modi and BJP fell short of their own expectations in India elections

India’s long election cycle ended on Tuesday, giving both supporters of incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the opposition results they can describe as successes.

As counting continued in the late evening, it was becoming clear that the Hindu nationalist Modi’s divisive politics and his mixed economic record did not give him the supermajority in parliament that his party aimed for.

The opposition led by the Congress party surprisingly gained significant electoral territory.

Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is expected to win 238 seats down from the 303 seats it secured in 2019. However, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by Modi is still slated to win 283 constituencies, which is over the 272-majority threshold needed in India’s 543-member parliament to form a government, according to projections.

This also means that Modi will march to a third term. The final results will be declared next week.

The opposition alliance has been projected to win 232 seats in the world’s most populous country, marking a significant comeback compared to 2019, when it won only 94 seats.

“The opposition ran a better campaign condemning the BJP’s “divisive politics” and pointing to attacks and intimidation of minorities by right-wing Hindus and anti-Muslim hate speech by some of the BJP supporters. The opposition also criticised Mr Modi himself for failing to stem communal and ethnic strife,” says Dr Dawood Azami, an expert on international affairs.

Other experts also credit the opposition's “tremendous resilience” in the face of rising Hindu nationalism under Modi.

The opposition is led by Rahul Gandhi, the grandson of Indria Gandhi, India’s former prime minister, who was the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, one of the country’s founding fathers and an advocate of secularism.

Experts say the BJP will face a formidable opposition in the parliament.

“To have a stronger opposition augurs very well for India’s democracy that has taken a hit during Modi’s 10-year rule,” said Rasheed Kidwai, an Indian journalist and the author of “24 Akbar Road,” a book about Congress party’s history which is closely linked with Nehru and Gandhi family.

It’s the economy, stupid!

Many dissatisfied Indian voters, who backed the opposition bloc, expressed their struggles to find proper jobs under Modi’s reign while the South Asia country has set its sights on becoming a global power by pursuing an assertive foreign policy.

“Unlike in the previous two national elections involving Modi, there wasn’t any overwhelming national issue or wave that dominated the campaign in 2024. Therefore, the vote this time was largely about trusting the leader and the party, as well as local issues such as services, governance, employment and poverty,” Azami tells TRT World.

New government jobs are hard to find in India, leaving many young people with rural backgrounds and little education without work, something that could have pushed them to vote for a change.

The Modi government has also continued to crack down on political opponents making citizens concerned about their basic rights and freedoms.

Modi’s alliance is losing in some controversial districts like the Faizabad constituency, where the prime minister recently inaugurated the Ram temple built in place of a mosque.

Indian farmers have also shown growing resentment toward the Modi government’s economic policies, which have affected their incomes. In recent years thousands of farmers have taken to the streets in protests against New Delhi’s plan to change the way grains and agricultural products are procured.

Unlike many developed states, agriculture continues to be India’s biggest economic sector, giving work to half of the country’s population. Many analysts assessed that farmers could be the biggest threat to Modi’s rule.

A weak mandate will make the Modi government think twice “to enact and implement some of the controversial reforms such as land acquisition and labour reforms,” says Azami.

The Muslim factor

Another potential factor behind the electoral beating of the Modi-led alliance might be related to how Muslims voted in Uttar Pradesh, India's biggest state, where Faizabad is located.

The opposition has done exceedingly well in UP and it is one of the reasons for the shortfall in BJP's overall tally.

“Minorities, especially Muslims, largely voted for the opposition due to the BJP’s Hindu nationalist politics,” says Azami.

While India’s Muslim population has grown in the years, its legislative representation has not followed the same course, drastically declining with the rise of Hindu nationalism championed by Modi and his allies.

Muslim representation’s sharp decline might be a factor for the pro-opposition voting attitudes of many Muslim voters in areas like Faizabad and greater UP.

In the 1980s Muslims in India accounted for 11 percent of the country’s population and were represented by 9 percent of the seats in the parliament.

Since then the size of the Muslim population has increased but this is not reflected in their representation in the legislature where Muslim members have less than 5 percent of seats.

While many Hindus have gathered under the BJP flag in recent years, the diverse Muslim vote bank scattered across the country struggled to consolidate behind any single political group, experts say.

Azami also points out that existing “systemic inequality” also played a role in Modi’s inability to gain more seats in the parliament, as the opposition campaigned against the BJP’s highhandedness, which has curbed some freedoms.

“The caste arithmetic among the Hindu voters and the BJP giving tickets to some controversial candidates also antagonised some of its cadre,” says the analyst.

Another reason could be the scorching temperature. Indian cities have been in the middle of an unprecedented heatwave, and many BJP voters, sure that their party would win anyway, did not show up at the voting booths, he says.

What’s next for India?

“Domestically, a third term for the Modi government will be tempered by its weaker mandate. This will affect the centralised decision-making style of Prime Minister Modi. He will now need to take his allies and coalition partners into confidence before taking key measures and making big decisions,” says Azami.

With the election results, the Congress, the country’s oldest party, is now back in the game while it still “remains on the losing side”, says Azami. After experiencing “humiliating setbacks” over the past decade, the current results are a cause for celebration, he says.

Despite election setbacks, in the international arena front, “the Modi 3.0 government will continue to pursue an assertive foreign policy and promote India as a civilisational state,” he adds.