Stocks plunge
STOCKS in India have seen their steepest plunge since March 2020 as the market reels from a shock result in the nation’s weeks-long general election.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi claimed election victory on Tuesday, but he fell far short of his expected landslide win. The opposition said voters had sent a clear message after Mr Modi’s Hindu nationalist party lost its parliamentary majority for the Ɲrst time in a decade.
Commentators and exit polls had projected an overwhelming victory for Mr Modi, whose campaign wooed the Hindu majority to the worry of the country’s 200-million-plus Muslim community, deepening concerns over minority rights.
But Mr Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) failed to secure an overall majority of its own, Ɲgures from the election commission showed, meaning it would need to rely on its alliance partners.
India said the public had given the party and its allies a mandate “for a third consecutive time”, Mr Modi told a crowd of cheering supporters in the capital New Delhi.
“Our third term will be one of big decisions and the country will write a new chapter of development. This is Modi’s guarantee.”
The main opposition Congress Party was set to nearly double its parliamentary seats, in a remarkable turnaround largely driven by deals to Ɲeld single candidates against the BJP’s electoral juggernaut.
“The country has said to Narendra Modi ‘We don’t want you’,” Opposition Leader Rahul Gandhi told reporters.
“I was conƝdent that the people of this country would give the right response.”
With more than 99 per cent of votes counted, the BJP’s vote share at 36.6 per cent was marginally lower than it was in the last polls in 2019.
Mr Modi was re-elected to his constituency representing the Hindu holy city of Varanasi by a margin of 152,300 votes – compared to nearly half a million votes Ɲve years ago.
The election commission Ɲgures showed the BJP and its allies on track to win at least 291 seats out of a total of 543, enough for a parliamentary majority.