Tag: India Election 2024

Will India’s Modi break the ice with Pakistan in his third term? | India Election 2024 News

Islamabad, Pakistan –  As Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was sworn in for a third time as his country’s leader on June 9, seven counterparts from neighbouring nations joined a very select audience in marking the moment.

The setting — a summer evening, with an orangish dusk sky, and handpicked leaders from the region in attendance — carried echoes of Modi’s first oath-taking ceremony as India’s premier in 2014, which was repeated in 2019.

But there was one big difference from 2014: Missing from the lineup of visiting leaders was the prime minister of Pakistan.

A decade ago, images of Pakistan’s then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif clasping Modi’s hands during his visit to attend the swearing-in event signalled a fresh hope for long-tortured India-Pakistan relations — hope that subsequent setbacks to ties have all but extinguished. Now, as Modi begins his third term in office, with a sharply reduced mandate that has left him dependent on coalition allies to stay in power, analysts expect the Indian leader to pursue a tough posture towards Pakistan, with little incentive to seek any easing in tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours.

“Modi will reach out to regional neighbours, all of whom were invited to his swearing-in.  But not Pakistan,” said Maleeha Lodhi, former Pakistani ambassador to the United Nations, United States and the United Kingdom. “His government is likely to continue its hard line towards Pakistan with which he has shown no interest to engage for the past five years. This is unlikely to change.”

And early signs appear to vindicate Lodhi’s assessment.

A message and an attack

On the very day that Modi took oath, at least nine people were killed and more than 30 injured when a bus carrying Hindu pilgrims in the Reasi district of Indian-administered Kashmir fell in a gorge after it was targeted by gunmen.

This was followed by three more incidents within a week in different areas of Indian-administered Kashmir in which security forces engaged with attackers, killing three while seven security personnel were injured.

Indian security agencies have blamed Pakistani involvement. Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Mumtaz Zahra Baloch rejected the allegations on Thursday, and accused Indian authorities of a “habit of making such irresponsible statements”.

“No one takes these allegations seriously,” Baloch said.

Still, a day after the attack in Reasi, former Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif tried to rekindle his past bonhomie with Modi.

“My warm felicitations to Modi Ji (@narendramodi) on assuming office for the third time. Your party’s success in recent elections reflects the confidence of the people in your leadership. Let us replace hate with hope and seize the opportunity to shape the destiny of the two billion people of South Asia,” the three-time prime minister, and currently a member of the Pakistani parliament, wrote on June 10.

The Indian premier, too, responded in kind, acknowledging the message by his former counterpart.

“Appreciate your message @NawazSharifMNS. The people of India have always stood for peace, security and progressive ideas. Advancing the well-being and security of our people shall always remain our priority,” he wrote on X.

By contrast, the congratulatory message from Pakistan’s current prime minister, Nawaz’s younger brother Shehbaz Sharif, was far more restrained.

“Felicitations to @narendramodi on taking oath as the Prime Minister of India,” Sharif wrote from his account.

Security concerns

After the attack in Reasi on June 9, India’s Home Minister Amit Shah — widely seen as Modi’s deputy — pledged that those behind the attack would not be spared.

India has long viewed Pakistan primarily through the prism of its security concerns. India accuses its neighbour of fomenting trouble in Indian-administered Kashmir, as well as of masterminding numerous violent attacks on Indian territory, charges which Islamabad has denied.

Ajay Darshan Behera, a scholar of international studies at the Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi, says that India’s policy towards Pakistan hinges on the issue of “terrorism”.

“The previous Modi regime aimed to raise the costs for Pakistan for supporting terrorism. If there is no major terrorist attack in Kashmir, this Modi regime will likely maintain a policy of indifference towards Pakistan. It is doubtful that Prime Minister Modi will unilaterally initiate any re-engagement with Pakistan,” he told Al Jazeera.

Shaping that approach is the spectre of violence that has always hovered over the relationship when the two sides have attempted peace overtures.

Nawaz Sharif was Pakistan’s prime minister when he travelled to India in 2014 to attend Modi’s first oath-taking ceremony [Harish Tyagi/EPA]

In late 2015, Modi paid a daylong surprise visit to Pakistan to attend the wedding of then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s granddaughter near Lahore.

The visit resulted in hopes that the two countries might be forging a path of reconciliation but merely a week later, a group of attackers entered an Indian Air Force base, killing at least eight Indians, including security personnel. India blamed Pakistan for the incident and demanded that it arrest the perpetrators of the attack.

India’s hardened stance towards Pakistan since then, said Lodhi, the former ambassador, had reaped “rich electoral dividends” for Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — especially during the 2019 Indian elections.

“Their Pakistan-bashing makes chances of any India-Pakistan thaw very slim,” she added.

Salman Bashir, another senior diplomat and a former Pakistani high commissioner to India, said that India’s current position on Pakistan — effectively, a refusal to talk until its security concerns are addressed — is a relatively cost-free option for Modi, though he added that it might be premature to speculate on the Indian premier’s next steps.

“There are no compulsions for Modi to try to mend relations with Pakistan. India stands to gain by continuing its adversarial policy towards Pakistan,” Bashir told Al Jazeera.

2019 turning point

When Modi won the second term in the 2019 elections, the election campaign was marked by anti-Pakistan jingoism fuelled by a sharp escalation in tensions that left the neighbours on the verge of war.

Months before the elections, an attack in Indian-administered Kashmir saw more than 40 Indian soldiers killed. The Indian government blamed Pakistan for orchestrating the attack and launched a strike inside Pakistani territory, saying it targeted fighters’ training camps.

Pakistan responded by sending its fighter jets into Indian airspace the next day and in the ensuing chase, an Indian Air Force jet was shot down and the pilot captured. The tense standoff only calmed down after Pakistan returned the pilot, Abhinandan Varthaman, two days after his arrest.

Riding the anti-Pakistan wave, as well as his own popularity, Modi’s BJP managed to win more than 300 seats and returned to power.

Five years later, things appear to have changed, at least domestically for Modi.

For long stretches of the seven-phase election campaigning, Pakistan’s mention as an electoral theme was almost negligible, and the country only became a talking point during the later stages.

Defying exit polls that had projected a landslide majority for the BJP and its allies, Modi’s party fell short of the halfway mark (272 seats) in parliament, winning 242 seats. It is the first time in a quarter century as a chief executive — first in charge of the state of Gujarat and then, since 2014, of India — that Modi has had to depend on allies to keep his government in place.

Irfan Nooruddin, a professor of Indian politics at Georgetown University in Washington, said that the “relatively poor performance” of the BJP in the 2024 general election might mean that the immediate focus of the Indian government is more “inward-looking” as the “party introspects on its losses and tries to avoid a repeat in the state elections”. Several key states are expected to vote for their legislatures in the next few months, including Maharashtra, India’s second-largest state.

“I doubt we’ll see any significant foreign policy announcements other than those that allow PM Modi to showcase his close personal partnership with Western leaders,” Nooruddin told Al Jazeera.

“Foreign policy tends not to be an electoral issue and the coalition partners on whom PM Modi’s government relies do not have strong foreign policy preferences,” Nooruddin added.

Diplomatic deadlock

Meanwhile, Sharat Sabharwal, a former Indian high commissioner to Pakistan, said he does not foresee any major change in the foreign policy of the new Modi government compared to the previous one.

“I think India would respond positively to improve relations with Pakistan provided it sees a constructive and pragmatic approach from the Pakistani side,” he told Al Jazeera.

The former diplomat said that while it is a given that better relations will help benefit both countries, he added that holding an antagonistic stance exacts more of a cost on Pakistan.

“Pakistan’s adversarial posture towards India, a country with an economy 10 times bigger, imposes a heavy burden on its economy. Suspension of trade with India also hurts Pakistan’s economy much more than the Indian economy,” he added.

Leaders of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad attending a leaders summit in Japan in 2022.
Leaders of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, attending a leaders summit in Japan in 2022 [Zhang Xiaoyu/EPA]

India, with a population of more than 1.4 billion people, is the world’s fifth-largest economy.

It is becoming an increasingly assertive voice on the global front, hosting G20 summits, and joining various multilateral forums like the Quad. Modi’s first overseas trip after taking oath was to attend the G7 leadership meeting in Italy.

Meanwhile, Pakistan, a country with 241 million people, is seeking its 24th loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) since 1958, to shore up its faltering economy amid a volatile political and security landscape.

“Both India and Pakistan’s economies would benefit from a more rational relationship, and given India’s relative economic strength vis-a-vis Pakistan, one could even argue that India would gain more,” Nooruddin said. “So, I do think it’s in India’s long-term interest to make its Pakistan posture less adversarial.”

Behera of Jamila Millia University said that improved bilateral ties could prove beneficial to traders and farmers on both sides who have lost business opportunities due to the stalemate.

“However, neither country can take the initiative to improve ties, as both have conditions for re-engagement. India demands a commitment from Pakistan to stop supporting terrorist groups, while Pakistan seeks the restoration of Article 370,” he added, referring to India’s 2019 decision to scrap the special status of Indian-administered Kashmir that gave it some autonomy.

Nooruddin said that both sides needed to do more to restore ties to a semblance of normalcy — but that New Delhi ought to take more responsibility.

“I’d argue it’s a shared onus. But India, which wishes to be seen as a global player and as the regional hegemon, should act first so that it can fulfil its global ambitions,” he said.



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‘Vote against jail’: How two Modi critics won India election from prison | India Election 2024 News

New Delhi, India – On the afternoon of June 4, a crowd of several hundred young men gathered in front of a two-storey house in Mawar village, with a clear view of the Pir Panjal mountains in the background, in Indian-administered Kashmir’s Kupwara district.

Some of those in the crowd raised a man over their shoulders who shouted, “Tihar ka jawab [the answer to Tihar jail]”, to which the crowd replied, “Vote se [the vote],” as women peeked through windows and children scaled the brick boundary wall around the house for a glimpse of the action.

The crowd was celebrating the victory of jailed engineer-turned-politician Abdul Rashid Sheikh, also known as “Engineer Rashid,” who won the Baramulla seat in Kashmir, securing nearly half a million votes. He defeated candidates from both major pro-India political parties in the disputed region – former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah of the National Conference, and Sajjad Gani Lone, a separatist turned mainstream politician from the Jammu and Kashmir People’s Conference.

An independent candidate beating opponents from major parties is rare enough – only seven of the 543 candidates elected winners in India’s just-concluded national vote ran as independents.  But Rashid did something ever rarer: he contested and won from Delhi’s Tihar jail, which is approximately 850km (528 miles) away.

The 58-year-old politician was arrested after New Delhi scrapped Kashmir’s special status and statehood on August 5, 2019. He faces charges of “terror funding” under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, an anti-terror law declared “draconian” by several rights groups. India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) charged Rashid in March 2022 with allegedly instigating Jammu and Kashmir police personnel against the Indian Army. He was also accused of receiving funds from Pakistan. He has denied the charges.

Rashid is not alone.

Some 485km (300 miles) away in Khadoor Sahib in the northwestern state of Punjab, voters elected 31-year-old Amritpal Singh, who has advocated for a separate Sikh homeland, to parliament.

Singh, like Rashid, contested from jail – in his case, a high-security prison in Assam, in the northeast corner of India. Singh, who is facing 12 criminal charges, was arrested by the Punjab police in April 2023 and charged under the National Security Act (NSA), which allows those considered a threat to national security to be detained without charge for up to a year. On June 4, as the results of India’s election were announced, Singh won by 400,000 votes.

The shock wins for Rashid and Singh represent a sharp message to mainstream Indian opposition parties, even as they suggest that people’s trust in the institutions of the Indian state has taken a hit in Punjab and Indian-administered Kashmir, regions that have witnessed anger against the ruling government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, say analysts.

“The space for mainstream parties is crucial. They serve as a bridge to national integration,” said Asim Ali, a political commentator. But in both Baramulla and Khadoor Sahib, voters concluded that these parties – many of which had been past alliance partners of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party – were not trustworthy, he said. “People do not regard them as autonomous parties or credible choices. So, if there is no legitimate alternative in democracy, persons on the fringes gain political space,” Ali said.

Abdul Rashid Sheikh, third from right, demonstrates against the killing of seven civilians in Srinagar in Indian-administered Kashmir on December 16, 2018, before being detained [Tauseef Mustafa/AFP]

Vote as revenge for jail term

India has long considered a rebellion against New Delhi’s rule in Indian-administered Kashmir as a form of terrorism and has deployed millions of its soldiers in the region for decades. New Delhi claims the region as an integral part of the country.

Rashid worked as a construction engineer before he quit his job in 2008 and joined politics, winning that year’s assembly elections from the Langate seat in his hometown as an independent candidate and again in 2014, as a candidate of Awami Ittehad Party, which he formed a year earlier.

Regarded by his supporters as a “common man” who leads a low-profile life, Rashid has routinely demanded accountability for alleged rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings and abductions, by India’s security forces in Kashmir. At the same time, he dissuaded youth from his constituency from throwing stones at Indian forces in 2010 during a period of heightened civil unrest in the region.

Kashmir witnessed a much higher turnout of voters this year than it has in the previous two decades with many concluding that casting their vote against the BJP was their only way to be heard by New Delhi.

Those sentiments appear to have crystallised in Rashid’s favour in Baramulla.

Tariq Ahmad, 35, a resident of Pattan in the Baramulla district, had never voted before. This time, he voted for Rashid.

“He is in jail, and we feel that this is the only way we can show our solidarity and support for him, through our democratic right,” Ahmad said.

Rashid’s two sons – Abrar Rashid, 23, and Asrar Rashid, 19 – appealed to voters to avenge their father’s arrest by going out to vote. They drew large crowds, particularly young people in northern Kashmir, an area prone to armed unrest.

Abrar said his father’s victory is also for other Kashmiris imprisoned in other parts of India.

“It is very tough for families whose kin are in jail. He can be the voice of those innocent people who are languishing in jail for no reason. He is in jail, and no one can understand the miseries of being jailed better than us. My father can be their voice,” Abrar told Al Jazeera.

Abrar said people came forward to campaign for his father. “It was all voluntary and spontaneous. I just paid 27,000 rupees [$322] for petrol,” he said.

Rashid has petitioned a Delhi court for interim bail to take his oath as a member of parliament.

Abrar Rashid, son of Abdul Rashid Sheikh, says people came forward to campaign for his father [File: Tauseef Mustafa/AFP]

Win for ‘democracy’, not ‘separatism’

According to analyst Siddiq Wahid, Rashid’s supporters turned out essentially to vote in a referendum against the August 2019 removal of Kashmir’s special status and the months-long crackdown that followed, when even the internet was suspended.

“Rashid’s election means that Kashmir’s voice and its aspiration for political justice for all its peoples are alive and well,” Wahid said.

Kashmir-based political analysts told Al Jazeera on the condition of anonymity that Rashid’s victory should not be read as a “separatist victory” but rather as a victory for democracy in Kashmir.

They argued that the large voter turnout was also due to an absence of threats from armed groups as well as pro-vote messaging from the Jamaat-e-Islami party, which enjoys substantial support in the region. Jamaat-e-Islami Kashmir remains banned, but one of its leaders recently met Home Minister Amit Shah.

In the Khadoor Sahab constituency of the northern state of Punjab, too, it was a democratic vote that has brought Sikh leader Amritpal Singh a win and a seat in India’s parliament.

On June 8, Singh’s parents distributed sweets to guards and jail staff at the high-security prison in Assam where he is being held to celebrate their son’s victory.

“We are very happy. Now we just want Amritpal to be released, so that he can take an oath,” Tarsem Singh, Amritpal’s father, told Al Jazeera.

Some experts view Singh’s victory with concern. Last year, Singh was accused of supporting the Khalistani separatist cause. But his supporters said the young Sikh leader simply advocates for religious adherence and tackling drug usage among Punjabi youth.

Sikhs are a religious minority in India who make up about 58 percent of Punjab’s population. The border state witnessed an armed separatist movement during the 1980s. In recent years, the state, known as India’s bread basket, has found itself in the grip of a drug crisis.

Singh is not the only candidate linked to Sikh separatism who won in Punjab.

Sarabjeet Singh Khalsa, the son of one of the assassins of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, won as an independent from Faridkot as the state’s Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) suffered a massive defeat.

Amritpal Singh, who has advocated for a breakaway Sikh state, won a seat in parliament in India’s recent national elections [File: Prabhjot Gill/AP Photo]

Shamshair Singh Warriach, a journalist and political analyst based in Punjab, ruled out that the vote was for “secessionism”. “People voted for Amritpal because he is now involved in democratic politics,” he said, adding that they support Singh only for his anti-drug activism.

But Singh’s win also comes at a time when the Modi government has been engaged in both domestic and international sparring over Sikh separatism.

‘Counter-assertion’

Since coming to power in 2014, Modi’s government has intensified the pursuit of Sikh separatists and arrested dozens of leaders with alleged links to the Khalistan movement.

As Punjab farmers took to the streets in recent years to protest against Modi government laws, sections of the BJP and its supporters suggested that the protesters were in many cases Khalistan sympathisers.

Meanwhile, the Canadian government and United States prosecutors have accused Indian intelligence agencies of involvement in assassination plots against Sikh leaders on their soil. New Delhi has denied the allegations, though it has agreed to probe the US allegations.

According to Aditya Menon, political editor of the Quint, a Delhi-based news website, Singh and Khalsa appear to be beneficiaries of broader dissatisfaction with mainstream parties in Punjab.

More broadly, he argued, Rashid, Singh and Khalsa have not won in a vacuum.

“We must also note that in the recent decade, there has been a rise of hardline Hindu nationalism and radicalism with the ascent of the BJP, so it’s only natural that there would be a counter-assertion,” he said.

 

Jammu and Kashmir National Conference party leader and former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah lost a parliamentary election to jailed independent candidate Abdul Rashid Sheikh [File: Dar Yasin/AP Photo]

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India’s Narendra Modi sworn in as country’s prime minister for a third term | India Election 2024 News

Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party has formed a coalition government with several partners after losing its outright majority in the election.

Narendra Modi has been sworn in as India’s prime minister for a third term, after a shock election setback that will test his ability to ensure policy certainty in a coalition government in the world’s most populous nation.

India’s President Droupadi Murmu administered the oath of office to Modi at a ceremony on Sunday at the Rashtrapati Bhavan, the president’s palace in New Delhi, attended by thousands of dignitaries, including the leaders of seven neighbouring countries, Bollywood stars and industrialists.

“Honoured to serve Bharat,” Modi posted on X, minutes before he was sworn in, referring to India’s name in Indian languages.

Supporters cheered, clapped and chanted “Modi, Modi” as the 73-year-old leader, dressed in a white kurta tunic and blue half jacket, was called to take his oath.

After being sworn in, Modi, flanked by officials from his Hindu-nationalist party and leaders of his coalition partners, vowed to protect India’s constitution.

Modi was followed by senior ministers in the previous government: Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah, Nitin Gadkari, Nirmala Sitharaman, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, and Piyush Goyal, among others, whose portfolios are yet to be announced.

Narendra Modi greets the gathering as he arrives to take the oath as the prime minister of India at the Rashtrapati Bhawan, in New Delhi, India [Manish Swarup/AP]

Modi, who started as a publicist of the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological parent of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is only the second person after independence leader Jawaharlal Nehru to serve a third straight term as prime minister.

He secured the third term after a multi-stage election that concluded on June 1 with the support of 14 regional parties in his BJP-led National Democratic Alliance. In the previous two terms, his party had won an outright majority.

Challenges ahead

Despite the united front, political analyst Zoya Hasan of New Delhi-based Jawaharlal Nehru University has told AFP news agency that Modi’s new coalition alliances could lead to friction down the road.

“Chandrababu Naidu and Nitish Kumar both are crafty politicians. So in some ways, Modi might be meeting his match in these two,” she said, referring to two BJP allies who do not share the BJP’s nationalist agenda.

“They have friends across the aisle. And surely the opposition will be wooing them,” Hasan said.

Modi is also under pressure to ensure India’s economic disparity does not widen.

India’s economy grew by 8.2 percent in the last fiscal year, one of the fastest rates among major economies.

But domestically, a lack of enough jobs, high prices, low incomes and religious fault lines pushed voters to rein him in.

“The middle class is the driving force of the country,” Modi said at an alliance meeting on Friday.

“In the coming days, we will work on increasing middle-class savings, improving their quality of life, and seeing what needs to be changed in our rules to achieve that.”

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India’s Modi to take oath as PM for third term with coalition allies | India Election 2024 News

Coalition members, especially the larger parties, are expected to have demanded concessions, including ministerial posts in the cabinet.

India’s Narendra Modi is set to be sworn in as the prime minister for a third term in power, but alongside a set of allies with whom he has formed a coalition after his party failed to get a majority in the April-June election.

The swearing-in ceremony will be held at the presidential palace in New Delhi on Sunday evening at 13:45 GMT while the prime minister has yet to announce who will be serving on his cabinet.

Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) garnered 240 seats, but fell 32 short in the 543-member lower house of parliament, registering its weakest showing in after a decade of dominating Indian politics.

Leaders of the 15-member coalition, called the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), who provided him with the required numbers to govern for a third five-year term, started negotiations in New Delhi earlier this week.

Coalition members, especially the larger parties, are expected to have demanded concessions from Modi, including ministerial posts in the cabinet. Modi’s previous cabinet had 81 ministers.

The Hindustan Times described days of “hectic talks”, while The Times of India said the BJP had sought to “pare down” their partners’ demands.

‘Meeting his match’

The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) is the largest BJP ally with 16 seats, and is widely reported to have secured four cabinet positions. The party is led by 74-year-old veteran politician and three-time chief minister Chandrababu Naidu, and dominates politics in the southern coastal state of Andhra Pradesh.

The Janata Dal (United) party is next in line, having secured 12 parliamentary seats. Its leader, 73-year-old Nitish Kumar, is known for having changed political allegiances in the past to suit his interests, having abandoned the opposition and switching to Modi’s side weeks before the election.

Analysts said that the coalition will shift parliamentary politics and force Modi’s once domineering BJP into a somewhat more conciliatory approach.

“In the past, the BJP has had confidence because of its sheer majority,” said Sajjan Kumar, head of the New Delhi-based political research group PRACCIS. “The coalition will now force the BJP to engage in more consultation.”

Zoya Hasan of the Jawaharlal Nehru University said Modi faced potential challenges ahead – warning he may be “meeting his match” in the “crafty politicians” of the TDP’s Naidu and JD(U)’s Kumar.

Indian media have reported that Modi will assign his own trusted BJP figures to the top posts in the cabinet, including the interior, foreign affairs, finance and defence ministries.

Security was tight in the capital on Sunday, with thousands of troops and police deployed as regional leaders flew in.

Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe – as well as leaders including those of Bhutan, Nepal and the Maldives – are due to attend the ceremony and the following state banquet.

Neighbouring rivals China and Pakistan are notably absent in not sending a top leader.

Meanwhile, Rahul Gandhi, a descendant of top Indian politicians from the Congress party that led the alliance competing with Modi, is expected to be recognised as the country’s official opposition leader.

The position has been vacant for a decade because the BJP had dominated the previous two elections, leaving the Congress – once India’s dominant party – short of a threshold.

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India’s Rahul Gandhi nominated as opposition leader after election gains | India Election 2024 News

Gandhi’s Congress party’s election results defied analysts’ expectations, and helped rehabilitate his political career.

Rahul Gandhi, scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family that governed India for decades in the wake of independence, has been nominated to lead India’s opposition in parliament following an election result that pulled his party back from the political wilderness.

A meeting of the leadership of Congress – the leading opposition party in the country – on Saturday voted unanimously to recommend Gandhi’s election as India’s official opposition leader. The role had been left vacant since 2014.

“All participants unanimously passed the resolution that Rahul Gandhi should take the position of leader of opposition in the parliament,” General Secretary KC Venugopal told a news conference after a meeting of the party’s executives.

The nomination will be put before a meeting of the 232 lawmakers belonging to a Congress-led opposition alliance later on Saturday.

On Tuesday, India’s governing BJP lost its majority in the chamber in an election that defied exit polls and shocked many supporters of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The BJP will still form the next government, but it will, for the first time in its 10 years in leadership, be reliant on a clutch of regional partners under its National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

Modi is set to be sworn into office for a third term on Sunday.

‘Voters have punished the BJP’

The six-week election saw 640 million voters head to the polls across India. It also saw Congress nearly double its parliamentary numbers, its best result since Modi swept to power a decade ago.

The comeback has aligned with Gandhi’s, who faced an embarrassing loss of his seat representing the city of Amethi in Uttar Pradesh in 2019. This year, he won the two districts he contested, Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh and Wayanad in Kerala. He will eventually have to choose which one to represent.

At the heart of Gandhi’s campaign efforts were long marches undertaken across the length and breadth of the country to galvanise support against Modi.

Aiyshwarya Mahadev, a spokesperson of the Indian National Congress, hailed the marches as the largest attempt the Congress party has undertaken in recent years to connect to the masses across the diverse country.

“We wanted to hear the voices on the ground and give them a voice. So during both the yatras [marches], we saw Rahul Gandhi listening to voices that hardly ever get heard, of people from communities that have been traditionally oppressed and marginalised,” she told Al Jazeera in March.

She added that the marches were “not about political pomp or any chest thumping” but were “about reaching the people on the ground, hearing their voices and becoming their voices”.

A Samajwadi Party supporter carries portraits of party leader Akhilesh Yadav, right, and Congress Party leader, Rahul Gandhi, as he celebrates his party’s lead during the counting of votes in India’s national election in Lucknow, India [File: Rajesh Kumar Singh/AP]

Gandhi is the great-grandson of Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister following independence in 1947. His grandmother, Indira Gandhi, and father, Rajiv Gandhi, also served in the role, while his mother has long been a top official for Congress.

Support for the younger Gandhi was on full display following Tuesday’s vote count, with several people seen sporting white T-shirts with photos of Gandhi on the back at the party’s headquarters in New Delhi.

“Voters have punished the BJP,” Congress leader Gandhi told reporters after the election results. “I was confident that the people of this country would give the right response.”

“BJP has failed to win a big majority on its own,” Congress lawmaker Rajeev Shukla told reporters at the time. “It’s a moral defeat for them.”

Reduced mandate

But the surge in opposition seats are not the only factor set to transform India’s legislature and how laws are passed in the country of 1.4 billion people.

Modi is currently staring down a reduced mandate, with analysts arguing that the allies he must depend on to maintain power may also serve as a check on his government.

Critics have long accused the majority-BJP government of ramming laws through parliament without discussions and debate.

That will not be easy any more, Sandeep Shastri, the national coordinator of the Lokniti Network, a research programme at the New Delhi-based Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), previously told Al Jazeera.

“It is going to be a much tougher ride in the parliament, very clearly, for the BJP.”

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The hype backfires: India’s surprise vote result | India Election 2024

The surprise election result in India leaves the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi missing a chunk of voter support and at the helm of a tricky coalition. Will this new configuration loosen the screws on Indian media and give them space to reinvest in journalism rather than the sycophancy that dominated the airwaves so much of the time this past decade?

Contributors:

Nishtha Gautam – Columnist, NDTV
Sreenivasan Jain – Host, The India Report
Mukul Kesavan – Historian and novelist
Fatima Khan – Journalist, The Quint

On our radar:

Amid the European parliamentary election, a battle against misinformation continues between the European Union and Russia. Meenakshi Ravi reports on how Moscow could be behind a campaign to misinform and discourage European voters.

Israel’s cultural annihilation in Gaza

The Listening Post has covered Israel’s war on Gaza through the prism of the media, including the unprecedented killing of Palestinian journalists. But there is another level to what is unfolding in Gaza: the genocidal assault on Palestinian history, existence and culture.

 

Feature contributors:

Jehad Abusalim – Writer

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‘Humbling moment’: What will Modi 3.0 look like for India? | India Election 2024 News

New Delhi, India – Vishal Paliwal, a 57-year-old worker of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), spent Tuesday afternoon sleeping at home as India counted over 640 million votes cast in its national election.

A granite stone trader in the northwestern state of Rajasthan, Paliwal lost his livelihood after Modi announced an overnight lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic. But Paliwal stayed loyal to the BJP. In the elections that just got over, too, he could not bring himself to go out and vote for the opposition.

Yet, a switch had flipped for him. “I could not get myself to vote for the BJP either,” said Paliwal.

By the time Paliwal woke up from his siesta, the nation had changed, too. The BJP had lost its majority, in a stunning verdict that defied exit polls, reduced to 240 seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha – India’s lower house of parliament – down from the 303 it had won in 2019. It is still poised to form the next government with a clutch of regional partners under its National Democratic Alliance (NDA). But Paliwal said the drop in the party’s numbers represented a necessary course correction for the nation.

“I was delighted to see the results,” said Paliwal. “People have chosen an opposition, not a government, by voting this time. We really needed this.”

As Modi prepares to take the oath on Sunday for his third term in office, his depleted mandate could shape what India’s next government looks like, said analysts. Already, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP)  and the Janata Dal (United), the two biggest allies Modi depends on to reach the halfway mark in the Lok Sabha, are believed to have made tough demands of the BJP – from high-profile positions in the Cabinet and as speaker of the house to a common governance programme.

The BJP insists its third straight term in office will be smooth. “These are baseless, misguided fears,” Zafar Islam, BJP national spokesperson, told Al Jazeera. “Everyone in NDA has faith in the leadership of PM Modi – the way the government was run for the last 10 years, it will be the same. There is no disconnect between our partners at all.”

Yet, both the TDP and the JD(U) insist they are secular parties, and count Muslim voters among their support base. The BJP has been accused of trying to plaster over hate crimes, high unemployment, rising inflation and soaring inequality using Hindu majoritarian politics. Now, these allies, serving as key pillars holding up the government, could serve as a check on Modi, said analysts and rights activists.

“Indian voters have collectively secured that Modi will not be able to function as a dictator like the last 10 years,” said Harsh Mander, a prominent rights activist who once served as a bureaucrat. “There is no evidence he was even consulting with his cabinet before any major decision. And that’s over now, hopefully.”

‘Vote for the lesser evil’

Afreen Fatima, a 26-year-old Muslim activist, was shuttling between her home and courts trying to get her detained father Javed Mohammad released, when police officials in riot gear surrounded her home in June 2022. Mohammad had been picked up by the police over protests in their hometown, Prayagraj, in Uttar Pradesh, India’s biggest state, against anti-Islam remarks by a member of Modi’s party, which had triggered an international backlash against New Delhi.

State authorities, ruled by BJP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, brought in earthmovers to bulldoze the building Fatima called home for years, following a tactic that Amnesty International has described as deliberate “punishment to the Muslim community”.

Two years later, as Modi referenced a series of a anti-Muslim tropes during the election campaign, Fatima said she felt the BJP’s pitch was “humiliating and dehumanising”.

“I hope that the BJP has been humbled by this mandate that will put an end to their arrogance,” she said. The BJP lost Fatima’s parliamentary district, Prayagraj, by over 50,000 votes. It lost all four districts surrounding the controversial Ram Temple, built on the site of the demolished 16th-century Babri mosque, and inaugurated by Modi in January in what effectively marked the launch of his re-election campaign.

Yet, Fatima says, too much hope is dangerous. “I’m not sure if it was a vote against anti-incumbency or a vote against hate. Or if the hate has been defeated at all,” she said. “With a lack of alternatives, we vote for the lesser evil to defeat the bigger monster.”

Fatima is also troubled by the lack of representation of the Muslim community within the opposition alliance, and in the Indian parliament, as well. In fact, the number of Muslim candidates fielded by all the parties dropped from 115 to 78 from the last election in 2019. Only 24 of them have been elected to Parliament, the lowest since independence.

Meanwhile, hate speech has soared in India in recent years. India averaged nearly two anti-Muslim hate speech events per day in 2023 and three in every four of those events – or 75 percent – took place in states ruled by Modi’s BJP, as per a report by the India Hate Lab (IHL), a United States-based research group.

Officials watch as a bulldozer razes the wall of a local mosque in New Delhi’s northwest Jahangirpuri neighbourhood, on Wednesday, April 20, 2022. Rights groups have accused Indian authorities of a growing pattern of ‘bulldozer justice’ aimed at punishing Muslims [Altaf Qadri/AP Photo]

‘Hope we are getting our country back’

But it is not only Muslims whom critics accuse Modi of targeting. In February this year, investigative agencies raided multiple premises linked to Mander, the rights activist, over allegations that he had received foreign donations without adequate government approvals. Mander denies the allegations. Two opposition chief ministers have been jailed on corruption charges in recent months, and homes and offices of other opposition political leaders have been raided.

In the days after the raids against him, Mander said he felt troubled and isolated. He said he wondered: “Was India always this country? Have we lost the secular republic?” The election results, he said, had reaffirmed his faith in Indian democracy.

Meanwhile, Modi’s return to the office will also sharpen a conundrum for the US and Western countries, said Michael Kugelman, the director of the Wilson Center’s South Asia Institute. The dilemma, he said was about “how to square the reality of the strategic importance of engaging with India [as a counterweight to China in the region] while the country slides toward illiberalism”.

“The results were a very humbling moment for [the BJP and Modi],” said Kugelman. “Modi will no longer be seen as invincible, and the opposition will no longer be dead in the water. And if the BJP needs to govern in a coalition, it will need to scale back some of its expectations and ambitions.”

For now, Modi and the BJP are underscoring the rarity of their accomplishment as they move towards forming India’s next government. Modi will become only the second Indian leader after Jawaharlal Nehru, independent India’s first prime minister, to return to power after a third consecutive election. But choppy waters might lie ahead for Modi and Amir Shah, India’s home minister who is widely seen as the prime minister’s deputy.

“The exit [of any public figure] defines the lingering image,” said Dilip Cherian, a renowned political strategist and image consultant. “And the exit route may not be as calm for Modi and Shah.”

Mander said that “there is a hope that we are getting our country back”. Yet, he suggested, it would be naive of the BJP’s critics to think that the election had served as an antidote to the social tensions that have deepened in India in recent years. “This election has created space [for Modi critics] but it will not resolve the core crisis of hate in the Indian society,” he said.

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India’s Modi set for third term as prime minister | India Election 2024

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India’s Narendra Modi will be sworn in for a third term as prime minister on Sunday after he was unanimously elected by members of the BJP and its National Democratic Alliance (NDA) as their leader.

Published On 7 Jun 2024

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India’s assassination plot | Politics

Fault Lines investigates India’s alleged campaign to assassinate critics in the United States and Canada.

Last June, a Vancouver-area plumber named Hardeep Singh Nijjar stood before his congregation of Sikhs to deliver a dark prediction: agents of the Indian government were plotting to kill him. He asked his followers to continue to pursue his life’s work – an independent state for Sikhs in India – after he was gone.

When Hardeep left the temple that evening, a white sedan hemmed him in, two armed men jumped out of the car, and shot him dozens of times. It was clearly a planned hit – witnesses saw the gunmen jump into a separate getaway car – but there was no concrete evidence that India was behind the killing.

Indeed, it was almost unthinkable to outside observers that India would risk its diplomatic and economic relationships with the United States and Canada to silence a marginal activist like Hardeep.

But two months later, the US Justice Department unsealed an indictment in New York that seemed to confirm his darkest predictions. Prosecutors allege that Hardeep’s killing was one of many such assassinations that Indian spies were planning across the US and Canada.

On this episode of Fault Lines, we investigate the Hindu-supremacist political ideology motivating India’s North American assassination plots and the global rise in transnational repression.

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Election results: How have India’s past coalition governments fared? | India Election 2024 News

Narendra Modi is likely to return as India’s prime minister for a third term but will have to rely on allies to run a coalition government for the first time after his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) fell short of a majority.

Modi led the BJP to landslide victories in the 2014 and 2019 elections, winning 283 and 303 respectively, becoming the dominant leader of the world’s largest democracy.

Analysts said the shock 2024 results, which saw BJP winning 240 seats – 32 short of a majority – would dent Modi’s aura and could force the 73-year-old leader to change his style of governance, which will now be partly dictated by coalition partners.

The National Democratic Alliance (NDA), comprising 14 parties, managed to grab 53 seats, giving the BJP-led coalition a total of 293 seats, 21 more than the required 272-seat majority.

This is not the first time the Hindu nationalist party will be heading a coalition government. In fact, the BJP’s first government, formed in 1996, was a coalition headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee. It lasted just for 13 days. Vajpayee returned as prime minister with the backing of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in 1998.

Here is what coalition governments have looked like for India in the past:

1977-1979: India’s first coalition government

India’s first coalition government was formed in 1977 after the Congress lost the elections. It was the party’s first loss since leading the country’s independence from the British in 1947.

The 1977 elections were held nearly two years after Congress leader and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had imposed a state of national emergency. Gandhi lifted the emergency and announced snap elections in January 1977.

Gandhi was defeated by a diverse alliance of parties called the Janata Party, which included the BJP’s precursor, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh. Other parties of the alliance included the Bharatiya Lok Dal (BLD) – a fusion of seven regional left-wing parties, the Socialist Party, the Swatantra Party and the breakaway of the Congress party.

Morarji Desai became prime minister after the Janata Party’s victory in those elections.

1979-1980: How India’s first coalition splintered

The coalition under Desai lasted for two years until the Janata Party splintered due to ideological differences. Desai’s Home Minister Charan Singh broke away after he was asked to resign from the cabinet.

Singh became prime minister in 1979 with the backing of Janata Party splinter groups and outside backing from the Congress party.

But Singh’s premiership lasted only 23 days as the Congress party withdrew support, forcing Singh to resign.

In the 1980 election, Indira Gandhi returned to power, when the Congress won 353 seats. Janata Party (Secular), a faction of the Janata Party, won 41, becoming the second-largest party then.

1989: The coalition against Congress

The 1989 election results brought a new historic first for India: It was the first time no party or pre-poll coalition won a clear majority after the Congress under Indra Gandhi’s son, Rajiv Gandhi, won 197 out of 529 seats.

Vishwanath Pratap Singh, an ex-Congress party leader and finance minister, stitched together a new coalition called National Front against his former party, which he had quit in 1987.

The National Front led by VP Singh managed to secure 143 seats while the BJP won 85 seats – its best performance since the party was formed in 1980. VP Singh became the prime minister in 1989, backed by the BJP.

His government fell in 1990 after the BJP pulled its support when its tallest leader, Lal Krishna Advani, was arrested during his nationwide yatra (trip) to build a Ram Temple in Ayodhya, where a 16th-century mosque stood at the time.

Chandra Shekhar, a senior Janata Dal (JD) leader, split the party – which was a part of the National Front – and formed the Samajwadi Janata Party in 1990. He succeeded VP Singh as prime minister in November 1990 with outside support from the Congress party. His government too fell several months later, ending a series of short-lived coalition governments.

In the 1991 elections, the Congress party again emerged as the largest party mostly due to sympathy over the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, father of current leader Rahul Gandhi, during a campaign rally. Congress leader PV Narasimha Rao became the prime minister with outside support from the Janata Dal. The Rao government, which completed its term, initiated the economic reforms that paved the way for high growth in the decades to come.

1996: The 13-day coalition

The BJP emerged as the single-largest party for the first time in 1996. The party won 161 seats while the Congress stood second at 140 seats, and the JD was a distant third with 46 seats.

Vajpayee was sworn in as prime minister, but he could not win a majority in the parliament. His government lasted only for 13 days.

He was succeeded by HD Deve Gowda, the leader of the United Front – a new coalition comprising 13 parties including the JD and the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) as well as left-wing and communist parties. Deve Gowda’s government fell due to coalition bickering within a year. Inder Kumar Gujral took over from him, but his government also could not survive for more than a year.

1998: The birth of the NDA

Vajpayee returned as prime minister after the United Front coalition was voted out in the 1998 elections. This time, he was able to assemble a coalition called the NDA, which included parties such as the Shiv Sena and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK). This government lasted 13 months before the AIADMK withdrew support.

1999: The NDA coalition

BJP leader Vajpayee led the NDA coalition to victory in 1999, winning 182 seats. The government completed its full term.

“I don’t think one can say coalition governments have not worked,” Jagdeep S Chhokar, founder of the Association for Democratic Reforms, which works on electoral and political reforms, told Al Jazeera.

“The diversity of India makes a coalition inherently unstable. However, that is what diversity seems to require. India can not be governed by a uniform entity. There needs to be dialogue, discussion, debate, give-and-take and being amenable to other people’s opinions – all the things which are the opposite of a dictatorship,” said Chhokar.

2004-2014: The birth of the UPA

The Congress party, under the leadership of Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi’s mother, emerged as the largest party. It cobbled together a new coalition, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA). Manmohan Singh, the architect of India’s economic reforms as finance minister in 1991, was chosen as the new prime minister.

The UPA alliance under the leadership of Singh was re-elected for a second term in the 2009 election on the back of impressive economic growth. Once again, the Congress ruled from 2009 to 2014 as the head of a coalition – it did not have a majority on its own.

How will Modi’s coalition government be different?

“We’ve had coalition governments for 20-30 years under Vajpayee and Singh,” said Chhokar from the Association for Democratic Reforms.

The incoming coalition government under Modi, he said, could be different “because of the individuals involved”.

“Vajpayee and Singh were different kinds of individuals, and Modi is different,” said Chhokar, adding that the previous two prime ministers “were more accommodating of differing opinions, whereas Modi seems to be the person who likes to have his way”.

“So, it may be stormy.”

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