India Renews Its Trust In Modi

ON THE SULTRY EVENING OF JUNE 4, AFTER THE results of the General Election confirmed a third straight term for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), its campaign spearhead Prime Minister Narendra Modi stood before the cheering party workers at their headquar­ters on Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Marg in New Delhi and said that the opposition I.N.D.I.A. bloc’s combined tally was lower than BJP’s alone.

His broadside—comparing an entire rainbow coalition with a single political party—was an apparent response to the instant narratives sewn during the day by a section of the media, commentators and political opponents who were quick to suggest that BJP was on the wane nationally and that Modi’s spell over the crowds had vanished. His intent was also to drive home his conviction that people continued to put their faith in him in the fiercely fought polls—beset with deep fakes, misinformation and other falsehoods—in his tenth year in office. Any other leader of a country as diverse as India would have had a poor day— thus was the reasoning that the alliance would soon endorse.

True, the party’s tally at 240 seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha trailed expectations, a vast majority of exit poll projections, and the results of the previous two elections of 2019 and 2014. And yet, there was no denying that the saffron party was still the winner and a coalition leader. In the run-up to the polls, BJP was expected to secure more than 300 seats on its own and 400 as an alliance. That didn’t happen. BJP doesn’t have an absolute majority on its own at the Centre this time although it has expanded to new geographies, winning state and parliamentary elections in Odisha and opening its account in Kerala.

Again, as in 2014 when he became prime minister for the first time, this time too, Modi can brandish many firsts like gold medallions. Back then, Modi was the first premier since 1984 to lead a party with an absolute majority in Parliament. This time, his is the first political formation since 1962 to hit a hat-trickofwins. Heisalsothefirstnon-Congressprimeministerto complete two full terms in office and comfortably return to power in the world’s most populous nation.

With alliance partners back in the spotlight after a gap of a decade, BJP will recalibrate itself into working closely with its key allies, including the N Chandrababu Naidu-led Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and the Nitish Kumar-led Janata Dal (United), among others. Evidently, Modi’s speech at the party headquarters on the evening of June 4 laid emphasis on his multiple priorities, especially pragmatism, development and empowerment of the deprived, key topics on which there is already consensus among all NDA partners.

WHILE NAIDU IS known to wholeheartedly embrace Modi’s economic vision, Kumar is on the same page with him regarding his social goals, which include a greater emphasis on backward communities and women. “NDA’s third term will see a new ‘Golden Chapter’ in India’s development and this is Modi’s guarantee,” Modi said, adding that “uplifting 25 crore Indians from poverty is our commitment to foster the empowerment of the deprived… Holistic development of all including the SC-ST-OBCs while also facilitating women-led development is our mantra,” Modi said.

Contrary to rumours about demands being raised by coalition partners, Modi and his allies, including Naidu and Kumar, have pledged in their huddle on June 5 to step up the offensive against corruption and revitalise the economy through reforms. In sharp contrast to unsubstantiated reports doing the rounds, Open has learnt that at the first meeting of NDA, in which the partners unanimously chose Modi as the leader of the alliance, the consensus was on forming the government at the earliest and laying to rest speculation about allies being zealously wooed, not on Cabinet berths. No such demands came up that day at the meeting, Open has confirmed.

To set the record straight, it was Naidu who had insisted on meeting as early as June 5 in Delhi. The others had readily agreed with the urgency of his tone when it was conveyed to them. At the NDA meeting, which was held at the prime minister’s 7 Lok Kalyan Marg residence, Naidu spoke about the historic nature of the alliance’s victory in the 2024 General Election, stressing that after 10 years of being in power, no other formation in recent Indian history has won seats anywhere close to what NDA and BJP managed in a bitterly contested election. The TDP leader went on to generously credit Modi with the triumph that, he added, was thanks to the transformative politics of the BJP heavyweight. He also said that all that Congress could manage after 10 years of being in power from 2004 to 2014 was a mere 44, the lowest tally ever in the history of India’s so-called grand old party.

Speaking on the occasion, JD(U) leader and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar also opined that the need of the hour was to form the government as soon as possible because people have been waiting for a while after a long-drawn-out election. “Whatever you want to do, you do it fast enough,” he told the gathering chaired by Modi about the formalities required to be completed to re-elect the prime minister.

Conspicuous at the meeting was a hurry to douse misreporting in the media and social media which were abuzz with ‘news’ of feelers being put out by Congress and other members of the Opposition to Naidu. Equally disconcerting was the news about Tejashwi Yadav, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader and former deputy chief minister of Bihar, “holding talks” with Kumar on the plane. Open has verified what had happened on the plane from Patna to Delhi on which Kumar and Yadav had flown together. When the flight took off from Bihar’s capital, Yadav was seated behind Kumar in the business class section. Besides Kumar, Tejashwi Yadav and Sanjay Yadav, an RJD Rajya Sabha member, there was the family of a high court judge and a former IAS officer in that section that had eight seats. Shortly thereafter, Yadav requested the lady, a relative of the former judge who was seated next to Kumar, to switch seats— and she politely obliged. The next thing that Kumar saw was Yadav seated next to him—and he smiled at his former deputy. A Patna-based journalist on the flight took the photograph of them together. By the time Kumar reached Delhi, the photograph had gone viral, insinuating that Kumar and Yadav had held political discussions—although all that Kumar did was smile at Yadav. None of these veterans is new to any of this: they simply argue that one cannot stop the waves, but are glad that they have learnt to surf in the rough waters of Indian politics.

At the NDA meeting attended among others by BJP president JP Nadda, Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, Nitish Kumar, Chandrababu Naidu, Shiv Sena chief Eknath Shinde, Janata Dal (Secular) leader HD Kumaraswamy, JanaSena Party chief Pawan Kalyan, Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) chief Chirag Paswan, Nationalist Congress Party (Ajit Pawar faction) leader Praful Patel, Asom Gana Parishad’s (AGP) Atul Bora, and Apna Dal’s (Soneylal) Anupriya Patel and others, the Apna Dal leader expressed regret that NDA was tormented in Uttar Pradesh (UP) by a misinformation campaign. Patel, who won from Mirzapur, added that although the alliance tried its best to counter the propaganda blitz targeted at the ruling party, certain rumours spread faster than expected and that there was a failure to reach out to people with immediacy and in clarifying various positions. The most damaging of such sinister campaigns was a deepfake video of Amit Shah, who was shown announcing a curtailment of reservation rights for Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs) and Other Backward Classes (OBCs). Cases were registered against social media handles run by Congress. BJP has concluded that the fake video had done much more harm than it had anticipated, especially in UP, where NDA suffered a significant setback. The poor performance of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) also tilted the fortunes in favour of the I.N.D.I.A. bloc, benefitting especially the regional Samajwadi Party (SP) led by former Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav who fought a winning battle solo for the first time. On all previous occasions, it was his late father Mulayam Singh who had sealed victories.

AT THE MEETING, All Jharkhand Students Union (AJSU) Party chief Sudesh Mahto—an NDA constituent—said that the coming together of Naidu and Kumar was an evocative moment for him in that it reminded him of the days of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government of 1999-2004 when both Naidu and Kumar were aligned with BJP. At the meeting, NCP leader Praful Patel turned up with a letter of support for Modi.

The others who spoke at the meeting too were gung-ho about the re-election of Modi in a historic win. “No demands were made at the meeting by any partner except to go ahead swiftly to form the government under the leadership of Modi,” a politician who attended the meeting told Open. There was a display of joy at the meet about NDA, especially BJP, spreading far and wide, including in Odisha, where it has won 20 of 21 seats in Lok Sabha while Congress won only one. Shockingly for them, the outgoing Biju Janata Dal (BJD) drew a blank. In Odisha, where elections were held simultaneously to the state Assembly, BJP won a landslide, trouncing the incumbent BJD led by Naveen Patnaik. BJP won 78 seats, securing 55 more seats and 7.5 per cent more votes compared with five years ago while BJD lost 4.5 per cent votes and 61 seats.

In Andhra Pradesh, Naidu’s TDP played a pivotal role in NDA’s surprise victory, securing 16 seats in the Lok Sabha polls in a tripartite alliance in which the JanaSena Party won two seats and BJP managed three. In the simultaneously held state elections in Andhra, TDP, which made a dramatic comeback from near-oblivion over political miscalculations of the past, dominated the polls, winning 135 out of 175 seats, even as the JanaSena Party won 21 and BJP eight seats. The incumbent YSR Congress Party of Jagan Mohan Reddy suffered a drubbing, losing 18 Lok Sabha seats and 140 Assembly seats.

At the June 5 meeting, Nitish Kumar noted that black money was in use in the elections and that it had to be fought. “We have to do something about it,” Kumar said. His concern was fully endorsed by other participants as a menace that needed to be weeded out. For his part, Chirag Paswan, chief LJP (Ram Vilas) in Bihar, whose party won all five Lok Sabha seats it contested in Bihar and has often described himself as “Narendra Modi’s Hanu­man”, was all praise for Modi’s leadership.

Modi, in his address to NDA constituents after listening to what they had to say, began by requesting all of them to ask their people to plant a sapling on that day, June 5, World Envi­ronment Day. He went on to concur with the views aired by the partners, especially about the no-holds-barred campaign unleashed against him and his allies as well as institu­tions that include the Election Commission of India (ECI) and others at the height of the campaign. While promising continuity of transparent governance and a crusade against corruption, he said that there will be a “push­back” against toxic misinformation targeted at them. Modi also said that those who made false promises to people, including handing slips promising homes to deceive the poor to pull in votes, would come under the scan­ner. According to reports in both local and national dailies, several women turned up in front of the Congress office in Lucknow, demanding that the guarantee cards of ₹1 lakh promised during the Lok Sabha polls be given immediately. Congress and its I.N.D.I.A. allies had promised that women from poor households would be given guarantee cards. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi himself had assured such guarantee cards to women from disadvantaged families. Gandhi had been quoted in the media as saying that the new gov­ernment on Congress’ watch would transfer ₹1 lakh annually into accounts of women belonging to SC, ST, and backward categories.

The NDA meeting resolved to look into cases of such false promises to lure voters. In general, NDA allies also alluded later to the damage caused by a pliable media which, according to one of them, is gleefully reporting “a massive setback” for BJP even as top leaders of the party are doing their best to expand the tally by persuading likeminded MPs into their fold. Their attempts have already met with results as several independents and parties with single MPs agreed to tie up with NDA.

The meeting also expressed delight at BJP winning a Lok Sabha seat for the first time in Kerala where NDA has massively improved its vote share. In the Thrissur Lok Sabha constitu­ency, winning BJP candidate Suresh Gopi trounced his Left rival VS Sunil Kumar by a margin of 74,686 votes while Congress came a poor third. Gopi won 37.8 per cent of the votes polled. EC data showed NDA’s vote share soared to 19.39 per cent from upward of 15 per cent in the 2019 General Election. Much to the anguish of the ruling Left government in Kerala, in most Lok Sabha seats in the state BJP won more than a lakh votes and in six of them more than 20 per cent votes. The ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) won only one seat and lost a good chunk of its traditional vote share. In some seats, Left candidates failed to get votes as the state government had alienated a large section of people. In Punjab, too, BJP gained in vote share which rose to 18.56 per cent compared with 9.63 per cent in 2019, surpassing former ally Shiromani Akali Dal’s (SAD) share.

With BJP as well as NDA extending its footprint, with probable exceptions, at the Centre its leaders hope to secure more support from nonaligned parties and even from within the Opposition fold. Besides, a massive operation is on as the ruling party senses an opportunity to extend its wingspread. BJP sees the Modi juggernaut advancing thanks to a renewed commitment by its allies, notwithstanding a revival for the main Opposition Congress and its allies—most of them battered from recent elections—from an existential crisis.

THE BJP-LED NDA is, regardless, thrilled at the results from various parts of the country, including Kashmir, where dynasty politics has been routed. Meanwhile, among the parties that have decided to throw their weight behind NDA are the Bharat Adivasi Party (BAP) (from Rajasthan’s tribal belt), the Rashtriya Loktantrik Party, the Zoram People’s Movement, and so on. It is not unlikely that Jagan Reddy and BJD too would like to stay in the good books of the ruling BJP. Again, nobody can vouch against the MPs of other parties, such as the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), veering towards the ruling front.

Although various fictitious—and malicious—stories are out about the demands that the allies of BJP are making, it is known that Naidu wants Amaravati to remain the capital of his state, a demand that will come up shortly. He also wants a special category status for Andhra because it was at a disadvantage after losing a significant amount of revenue due to the fact that Hyderabad fell in the new state of Telangana carved out of undi­vided Andhra Pradesh in 2014. JD(U)’s KC Tyagi also later made a statement to the media about seeking special status for Bihar.

The special category status is granted to regions that have historically been at a disadvantage compared with the rest of the country. So far, 11 states enjoy this status, which means they get priority funding from the Centre.

BJP doesn’t see any difficulty whatsoever in working with its alliance partners. It is also pinning its hopes on the Opposition, which is typically fragmented and in disarray, to weaken further as time passes. And Modi looks firmly on the saddle on the back of popular trust and is ready to move ahead. The 73-year-old is confidence personified and knows only too well that a smooth sea never made a skilled skipper.

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