Month: June 2024

New Delhi (TIP)- The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) vote share in the 2024 general electioncontracted in most of the states and union territories (UTs) that had relatively low rates of growth in per capita income since the previous Lok Sabha polls in 2019, shows an analysis of Election Commission of India (ECI) data and per capita net state domestic product (NSDP) data from states. NSDP per capita is taken as the per capita incomeof a state and is counted among states’ key economic indicators.
Of the 12 states and UTs where per capita NSDP grew by a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of up to 2 per cent, and where the BJP contested in the recently-concluded Lok Sabha elections, the party’s vote share shrunk in nine. These nine states and UTs include Bihar, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Haryana, Delhi, Uttarakhand, Goa, Manipur, and Chandigarh. Kerala, Sikkim, and Andaman and Nicobar Islands were the outliers to the trend.
For the purpose of this analysis, the CAGR of per capita NSDP was divided in three segments: low (up to 2 per cent), medium (2.1-4.0 per cent), and high (over 4 per cent). Among all states and UTs, the overall range of per capita NSDP CAGR ranged up to 6.1 per cent. CAGR was considered over absolute growth as per capita NSDP data for some states was not updated for 2023-24 (FY24) and was available either till FY23 or FY22. The base year for the comparison was taken as FY19. A few UTs that do not maintain per capita NSDP data were not considered.
While the data does suggest a correlation between per capita state income and the BJP’s vote share among most of the low-growth states, the trend is not as stark when it comes to states and UTs in the middle- and high-growth segments.
It is worth noting that like most economic indicators, per capita incomes and their growth rates vary across states and are contingent upon a number of factors and conditions. Also, election outcomes depend on a host of factors — many of which are not directly linked to the economy — and their various permutations and combinations.
Among the nine states with a per capita NSDP growth rate of over 4 per cent, the BJP registered an expansion in vote share from 2019 levels in five — Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, and Tamil Nadu. Four states — Gujarat, Rajasthan, Karnataka, and Arunachal Pradesh, saw a contraction in the BJP’s vote share despite a relatively high rate of growth in their per capita incomes.
Similarly, the BJP’s vote share expanded in five of the nine states and UTs with per capita NSDP growth rate of 2.1 per cent to 4 per cent. These five states included Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Telangana, Tripura, and Mizoram. The four where the BJP saw a decline in vote share were Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Himachal Pradesh, and Jammu & Kashmir.
41 parties to have MPs in 18th Lok Sabha; 339 members from BJP, Congress alone
As many as 41 political parties will have representation in the upcoming 18th Lok Sabha, with this number rising from 36 in the 17th Lok Sabha that was dissolved on Wednesday, post-poll data shows.
The two largest outfits – the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the opposition Congress – will have 339 MPs in the 543-member House (BJP: 240, Congress: 99). The BJP, which fell 32 seats short of what would have been its third consecutive single-party majority (282 seats in 2014, and 303 in 2019), the Congress increased its tally from 44 seats in 2014 and 52 five years later.
The BJP, however, is set to form its third successive government at the Centre with help of its National Democratic Alliance (NDA) partners – Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to take oath on June 8 for what will be his third consecutive term in office. The NDA parties won 293 seats in the Lok Sabha.
The Congress-led INDIA bloc, on the other hand, will have 233 MPs, with Samajwadi Party (SP), the grand old party’s Uttar Pradesh-based ally, winning 37 seats in the country’s most populous state, making the Akhilesh Yadav-led party the largest after the BJP and Congress. The SP is followed by fellow INDIA members: West Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress (29 seats) and the DMK (22 seats), which governs Tamil Nadu.
National parties to have 64% seats
According to an analysis by the think-tank PRS, political outfits recognised as “national parties” secured 346 or 64% seats, while regional parties won 197 (33%) seats.
Candidates from non-NDA/INDIA parties clinched 17 seats, including seven by independents.
As per Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), a poll rights body, the recently-concluded Lok Sabha elections were contested by 751 parties, up 104% from 2009, when nominees from 368 parties were in the fray. The number of parties that contested in 2014 and 2019 was 464 and 677, respectively, ADR said.
In the upcoming 18th Lok Sabha, as many as 526 candidates will be from the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), which won 292 seats in the recently-held general elections, and the Congress-led INDIA bloc, which bagged 234 seats. The remaining 17 to-be Members of Parliament (MPs) do not belong to either bloc; seven of them contested and won as independents.
Who are these seven independents?
They are Amritpal Singh, Sarabjeet Singh Khalsa, Patel Umeshbhai Babubhai, Mohamad Haneefa, Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav, Vishal Patil, and Sheikh Abdul Rashid alias Rashid Engineer. Two are currently in jail: Amritpal Singh and Rashid Engineer.
Profile
Amritpal Singh: Amritpal, who heads pro-Khalistan outfit Waris Punjab De, is currently lodged in Assam’s Dibrugarh jail under the National Security Act (NSA). He returned to India in September 2022 from Dubai, where he moved in 2012 to join his family’s transport business.
Sarabjeet Singh Khalsa: He is the son of Beant Singh, one of the two bodyguards who assassinated then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in October 1984. Singh’s grandfather, Baba Sucha Singh, also served as a Lok Sabha member, representing Bathinda.
Patel Umeshbhai Babubhai: Babubhai is a social worker, according to ADR. His victory is significant as he defeated sitting BJP MP Lalubhau Babubhai Patel, who was seeking a fourth successive term from the Daman and Diu seat.
Mohmad Haneefa: A former district president of the National Conference, Haneefa is the fourth independent to win the Ladakh seat, which came into existence in 1967. Independents won here in the 1984, 2004, and 2009 national election as well.
Rajesh Ranjan: Also known as Pappu Yadav, Ranjan merged his Jan Aadhikar Party (JAP) with the Congress in March. Ranjan, who has served multiple terms as a Lok Sabha member, contested independently after the Congress gave Purnia to the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) under their seat-sharing agreement.
Vishal Patil: The grandson of former Maharashtra chief minister Vasantrao Patil rebelled against the Congress after the grand old party’s ally, Shiv Sena (UBT), fielded its own candidate.
Sheikh Abdul Rashid: Engineer Rashid is currently lodged in Delhi’s Tihar Jail in a terror-funding case. The former two-time legislator was arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in 2019 on charges of terror-funding activities, becoming the first mainstream leader to be held under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.

New Delhi (TIP)- Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared victory Tuesday for his alliance in India’s general election, claiming a mandate to push forward with his agenda, even though his party lost seats to a stronger than expected opposition, which pushed back against his mixed economic record and polarizing politics.
“Today’s victory is the victory of the world’s largest democracy,” Modi told the crowd at his party’s headquarters, saying Indian voters had “shown immense faith” both in his party and his National Democratic Alliance coalition.
Official results from India’s Election Commission showed the NDA won 286 seats, more than the 272 seats needed to secure a majority but far fewer than had been expected.
Modi’s win was only the second time an Indian leader has retained power for a third term after Jawaharlal Nehru, the country’s first prime minister. But also, for the first time since his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party swept to power in 2014, it did not secure a majority on its own, winning 240 seats —- far fewer than the record 303 it won in the 2019 election.
That means Modi will need the support of other parties in his coalition — a stunning blow for the 73-year-old, who had hoped for a landslide victory.
The party may now be “heavily dependent on the goodwill of its allies, which makes them critical players who we can expect will extract their pound of flesh, both in terms of policymaking as well as government formation,” said Milan Vaishnav, director of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
More than 640 million votes were cast in the marathon election held over a span of six weeks in the world’s largest democratic exercise.
In the face of the surprising drop in the BJP’s support, challengers claimed they had also won a victory of sorts, with the main opposition Congress party saying the election had been a “moral and political loss” for Modi. “This is public’s victory and a win for democracy,” Congress party President Mallikarjun Kharge told reporters.
Despite the setback, Modi pledged to make good on his election promise to turn India’s economy into the world’s third biggest, from its current fifth place, and not shirk with pushing forward with his agenda.
He said he would advance India’s defense production, boost jobs for youth, raise exports and help farmers, among other things.
“This country will see a new chapter of big decisions. This is Modi’s guarantee,” he said, speaking in the third person. Many of the Hindu nationalist policies he’s instituted over the last 10 years will also remain locked in place.
Before Modi came to power, India had coalition governments for 30 years.
The opposition INDIA coalition won 225 seats and was leading in five others yet to be called early Wednesday morning. Congratulations for Modi from leaders of regional countries including neighboring Nepal and Bhutan flowed in, while the White House commended India for its “vibrant democratic process.”
In his 10 years in power, Modi has transformed India’s political landscape, bringing Hindu nationalism, once a fringe ideology in India, into the mainstream while leaving the country deeply divided.
His supporters see him as a self-made, strong leader who has improved India’s standing in the world. His critics and opponents say his Hindu-first politics have bred intolerance while the economy, one of the world’s fastest-growing, has become more unequal.
For Payal, a resident of the northern city of Lucknow who uses only one name, the election was about the economy and India’s vast number of people living in poverty.
“People are suffering, there are no jobs, people are in such a state that their kids are compelled to make and sell tea on the roadside,” Payal said. “This is a big deal for us. If we don’t wake up now, when will we?”
Rahul Gandhi, the main face of the opposition Congress party, said he saw the election numbers as a message from the people. “The poorest of this country have defended the constitution of India,” he told a news conference.
Modi’s popularity has outstripped that of his party’s during his first two terms in office, and he turned the parliamentary election into one that more resembled a presidential-style campaign, with the BJP relying on the leader’s brand.
“Modi was not just the prime campaigner, but the sole campaigner of this election,” said Yamini Aiyar, a public policy scholar.
Under Modi’s government, critics say India’s democracy has come under increasing strain with strong-arm tactics used to subdue political opponents, squeeze independent media and quash dissent. The government has rejected such accusations and says democracy is flourishing.
Economic discontent has also simmered under Modi. While stock markets have reached record-highs, youth unemployment has soared, with only a small portion of Indians benefitting from the boom. As polls opened in mid-April, a confident BJP initially focused its campaign on “Modi’s guarantees,” highlighting the economic and welfare achievements that his party says have reduced poverty. With Modi at the helm, “India will become a developed nation by 2047,” he repeated in rally after rally. But the campaign turned increasingly shrill, as Modi ramped up polarizing rhetoric that targeted Muslims, who make up 14% of the population, a tactic seen to energize his core Hindu majority voters.
The opposition INDIA alliance attacked Modi over his Hindu nationalist politics, and campaigned on issues of joblessness, inflation and inequality. “These issues have resonated and made a dent,” added Aiyar, the public policy scholar. Source: AP

New Delhi (TIP)- Ahead of the election results, all talk was about the Bharatiya Janata Party significantly expanding its presence in the southern part of the country, improving its seat and vote share. To some extent, the party achieved this — it won eight seats in Telangana, up from four in 2019, with its vote share increasing from 19.5% to 35.2%; it won three seats in Andhra Pradesh, thanks to its alliance with the Telugu Desam Party and the Jana Sena, with its vote share increasing from 0.96% to 11.3%; and it won one in Kerala, with its vote share increasing from 12.9% to 16.7%, and comparing well with the LDF’s 33.3%.
But in the state where it expected to take over the mantle of main opposition from its erstwhile ally, the AIADMK, and where it is led by the vocal and articulate K Annamalai, considered by many to be a next-gen leader of the BJP, the party managed to increase its vote share only to 11.3% from 3.6%, and won no seats. Even Tamilisai Soundararajan, the former governor of Telangana who resigned her post to contest from Chennai South lost to her DMK rival, Thamizhachi Thangapandian.
And in Karnataka, where it won 25 of the 28 seats on offer in 2019 (and supported an independent who won the 26th), the BJP won 17 seats (19 with its ally JDS), with a 46.1% share of the vote, down from 51.4% in 2019.
Taken together, that isn’t all-that-bad a performance, but it is definitely not as good as the party would have wanted — and not good enough to offset losses in UP, West Bengal, and Maharashtra. It is also not commensurate with the effort put in by the party, and its campaigner-in-chief, Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The BJP’s southern focus began soon after its triumph in 2019, when it won the Lok Sabha elections with a massive mandate but failed to secure any seats in three states, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala.
Three years earlier, the BJP had drawn up a plan to transcend the barriers in the southern and eastern states that made up the coromandel belt. But, while it won 18 of the 42 seats in West Bengal and 8 of the 21 in Odisha, the southern states barring Karnataka proved to be insurmountable fortress.
“This did not sit well with the party bosses. Both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah were emphatic that for the BJP to grow as a formidable political entity it will have to shatter the impression that it is a north Indian party or that it is no match to the regional parties,” said a senior party leader familiar.
State units were instructed to work out details of restructuring the party units, mobilising cadre, identifying leaders with mass appeal, aligning with parties that had a hold over influential vote banks and propagate Brand Modi.
“After 2014, Modi became a household name and was popular across castes and classes. While this showed in results in nearly all of North India and large parts of the west, there was a gap in the South. We had to then focus on the power of the brand and build a bridge between Modi and south,” said the leader quoted above.
In each of the five states the outreach was designed keeping in mind cultural sensitivities, local traditions, demography and floating voters who were not opposed to BJP and its brand of Hindutva.
It wasn’t enough. The INDIA bloc, led by the DMK in Tamil Nadu, won all 39 seats. In Karnataka, the Congress managed to win nine seats, eight more than in 2019. And in Kerala, the UDF won 18 seats and the LDF, one.
But local leaders pointed to the vote share
“One should not only look at the seats, but also, at the vote share. Between 1967 and 2024 the combined vote share of the AIDMK and the DMK has been between 67 to 74%. This time it is below 50%… the BJP’s has risen to 10% from 3.6% in 2019. From now on politics in the state, will be tripolar. The BJP’s march towards winning the assembly polls begins now,” said R Srinivasan, general secretary of the BJP’s Tamil Nadu unit and its candidate from Madurai.
In Kerala, where its decision to raise the Sabarimala issue ended up benefiting the Congress in 2019, the BJP opted for development over Hindutva, but could not convert the rise in vote share into more than a single seat, with efforts to build bridges with both Christians and the powerful Ezhava community which accounts for 23% of the electorate coming a cropper. It will also not escape the BJP’s attention that some of its success in the south has come on the back of alliances.
The power of alliances
In Karnataka, the JDS, a family-run party that had been in the BJP’s crosshairs for perpetrating dynasty politics, was inducted into the NDA to shore up the numbers after losing the state polls in 2023. The JDS’s hold over the Vokalliga vote bank was considered a key reason for the alliance. The public outrage over allegations of sexual harassment and rape against JDS scion and Hassan lawmaker Prajwal Revanna may have hurt the BJP, but the alliance has helped it in the state. The JD(S) itself has won two seats.
In Andhra Pradesh, where the party’s organisational capacity has come in for censure from the central leadership on more than one occasion, the tie up with Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP and Pawan Kalyan’s Jana Sena paid off. The TDP broke its ties with the BJP in 2018 over the issue of delay in granting special status to the state but has emerged as a dependable ally adding to NDA’s overall tally. The BJP won 3 seats in the state, and the alliance 21, of a total of 25.
Driving the narrative
The party attempted to drive the narrative in each of the states. Whether it was attacking the Pinnarayi Vijayan government in Kerala for corruption and irregularities or the Karnataka government for mooting reservation for Muslims under the OBC quota, the BJP kept stoking the fire. In Telangana it went all out against the BRS, accusing the party of irregularities. And with the help of governors, it also targeted state governments, most notably in Tamil Nadu.
None of this seems to have worked.
“There were many deficiencies. For instance we could not counter the fears that the new delimitation exercise to be carried out after 2026 will result in the southern states losing out on seats…or the BJP wants to withdraw quotas” said a second BJP leader who asked not to be named.
The leadership issue
Although PM Modi was the central figure of the BJP’s outreach in the south, the party groomed new faces to emerge as leaders on the ground. Consequently, a bunch of new leaders dominated the headlines, in Tamil Nadu, the BJP hustled its way into the political arena, led by a young and belligerent K Annamalai.
In Telangana , while Bandi Sanjay led the campaign against the BRS with a state-wide Yatra, he was abruptly replaced by union minister G Kishen Reddy as the state president and in Andhra, D Purandeswari became the first woman state president.
Yet, none of them managed to take on the regional satraps. Source: HT

New Delhi (TIP)- Forty-four seats and 19.3% of the vote in 2014; 52 seats and 19.49% of the vote in 2019; and 99 seats and 21.26% of the vote in 2024. One of the stories of these elections has been the turnaround of the Indian National Congress, one made all the more remarkable by its improved overall strike rate (defined as seats won to seats contested expressed in percentage) of 30% compared to 8.3 in 2019 and 9.4% in 2014, and improved strike rate of 29% in head-to-head contests against the BJP, compared to 8% in 2019 and 12.2% in 2014.
The performance of the Congress and the INDIA bloc meant that the BJP was restricted to 240 seats, short of the majority, although the larger NDA grouping which it heads won 293 seats.
“The election result that has come today is the result of the people. This is the victory of the people and democracy. We humbly accept the public opinion in the elections of the 18th Lok Sabha. This time the public has not given a clear majority to any one party (especially the ruling party),” Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said on Tuesday.
He also targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“BJP has sought votes on one person and one face, but now it is clear that the mandate has gone against Narendra Modi. This is a huge defeat for them morally and politically. They have suffered a huge loss from a moral point of view.”
The Congress’s turnaround was built on three pillars.
The first was alliances
The INDIA bloc of opposition parties got off to a rocky start with many partners going public in late 2022 and early 2023 about the Congress delaying seat sharing talks. But eventually, the Congress-led bloc of 30 parties did manage to do this to a significant extent. The bloc fielded candidates across 543 seats, with the most serious of the intragroup contests in 75 seats across West Bengal, Kerala, and Punjab. And in around 350 seats, the alliance managed to field a single candidate against the BJP.
Much of that came from the Congress’s willingness to let go. It fielded only 328 candidates this time, the lowest it ever has. Interestingly, the party was willing to go even lower.
In an internal meeting of Congress leaders on January 6 at the party headquarters, Kharge hinted that the Congress would fight fewer seats: “We should focus on 255 seats,” he said to a surprised audience.
“We respected INDIA partners. We accommodated their wishes and fought together,” Rahul Gandhi said at a press conference on Tuesday.
But the Congress was also careful about picking its candidates. “During the discussions with Samajwadi Party, they repeatedly advised us not to field Imran Masood from Saharanpur as he had lost in previous polls. But we stuck with Masood and now he is winning the seat with more than 77,000 votes,” said a leader who asked not to be named.
And where it felt a seat adjustment would hurt the alliance, it avoided one, like it did in Punjab, although it entered a pact with the Aam Aadmi Party, which rules that state in two others and in Delhi. “If a ruling party and the principal Opposition party joined hands, our votes would have gone to the BJP and Akali Dal,” said a senior Congress leader from Punjab. Of the 13 seats in Punjab, the Congress won seven and the AAP three.
Similarly, it avoided a pact with the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal.
In Kerala, it did not partner with the Left. It may have won only one seat in West Bengal, but the UDF alliance headed by it won 18 in Kerala (one less than last time), indicating that the approach worked for the party.
“We had to revive our organisation. And now we hope to reclaim the principal Opposition’s role,” said a second Congress leader. In 2014 and 2019, with less than 10% of the seats in the Lok Sabha, the Congress was not eligible to have its house leader designated leader of the opposition. That will change now.
The second was the campaign itself
The Congress focused sharply on the caste census, unemployment and price rise, emphasising the 25 guarantees in its manifesto and aggressively rebutting the BJP’s attempts to claim that Congress would redistribute wealth or hand over resources to Muslims, if it came to power.
An A4-size card with 25 concrete guarantees scribbled on it was perhaps the most important piece of document for the Congress in Lok Sabha 2024 campaign. It contained five guarantees each for women, young people, farmers, workers, and for social justice.These included major sops — Rs 1 lakh for women heads of every poor family, 10kg of free food grain, and the right to apprenticeship. “We gave a new vision to India. We gave a pro-poor vision for India. The country has clearly said that we do not want Narendra Modi and Amit Shah running the affairs of this country,” Gandhi said. “We realised that our focus has to be the aam admi. The rural and urban poor and the middle class. And we curated our manifesto in that way,” said a third Congress leader who asked not to be named.
The issue of caste-based reservation was a key issue. The Congress and the other INDIA bloc parties alleged that the BJP wanted to win over 400 of the 543 Lok Sabha seats so that it could change the Constitution and do away with caste-based quotas for the SC and ST communities.
While this wasn’t factual, the BJP struggled to counter it. And Gandhi also pitched for a caste census, promising proportionate benefits, and also said it would raise the 50% ceiling on reservation for SC, ST, OBCs. Clad in a white polo T-shirt and trousers, his uniform during the Bharat Jodo Yatras, Rahul Gandhi carried a special pocket-edition of the Constitution, waving it around at almost every meeting.
“For the first time in recent history, the Constitution became a key plank in the Lok Sabha election. And it possibly had its effect especially in the poor belts,” said economist Abhirup Sarkar.
“Why do they need 400 seats?” asked a number of Congress candidates as well as INDIA bloc leaders during the campaign. They offered the answer too: to change the Constitution drafted by BR Ambedkar to do away with reservation.
The third was the party organisation
Between 2019 and 2024 elections, Rahul Gandhi travelled more than 10,000km, mostly on foot in his two yatras, reaching out to people and seeking to revive the Congress organisation at the grassroots level. His sister, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, opted for campaigning across India, and especially in Uttar Pradesh, instead of fighting in Amethi.
The Congress organisation under Kharge emerged united. More importantly, it was responsive and flexible enough to react to the BJP, often using social media to good effect, an area where the party had lagged in 2014 and 2019.
For instance, sitting in front of a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi, on May 8, Rahul Gandhi recorded a short video to debunk Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s claim that the Congress was sent a “tempo-load” of money by Adani and Ambani. “You spoke about tempo. Are you talking from your personal experience?” Gandhi asked Modi.
Congress leaders close to Gandhi said the party was sharp and quick in its rebuttal to what they termed “Modi’s lies”.
So, when the BJP alleged that the Congress wanted to redistribute wealth, the party machinery went full throttle to argue that its entire manifesto didn’t say a word on redistribution.
To be sure, with 99 seats in the Lok Sabha, the Congress is still far behind the BJP, but experts said the improvement is stark. “I think it was a major turnaround for the Congress given the adversities it has faced in the run up to the poll. It will form a bigger and better pressure group inside and outside Parliament but the Congress also has the larger responsibility to take the allies together for the upcoming elections,” said political analyst Suman Chattopadhyay. Source: HT