Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, June 4: Even as the Prime Minister Narendra Modi thanked the people of India for giving the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) a third consecutive win, the Congress called the Lok Sabha elections outcome a “victory for democracy and defeat for Modi and the arrogance of the BJP leaders.”
“People have placed their faith in the NDA, for a third consecutive time! This is a historical feat in India’s history,” PM Modi said in a post on X. “I bow to the Janata Janardan for this affection and assure them that we will continue the good work done in the last decade to keep fulfilling the aspirations of people,” Mr Modi said even as the BJP’s fate hanged in the support of its alliance partners in the NDA.
Mr Modi who also later visited the party headquarter in Delhi and addressed the party workers gathered for the “victory celebrations,” said, “I also salute all our Karyakartas for their hard work. Words will never do justice to their exceptional efforts.”
Trends show the NDA crossed the halfway mark and was around 290 seats. The Opposition bloc INDIA also made a comeback of sorts, assured of winning at least 234 seats in the Lok Sabha – a huge improvement since 2019.
The Congress, though falling short of its expected seats, is buoyed by what they said was the key takeaway of the Lok Sabha election 2024: A people’s mandate that was a “victory for democracy and defeat for Prime Minister Narendra Modi”. Encapsulated in it is a message for the Prime Minister, the Congress said. “The country has unanimously and clearly stated, ‘We do not want Mr Narendra Modi and Mr Amit Shah to be involved in the running of the country. We do not like the way they have run this country for the last 10 years’. That is a huge message to Mr Narendra Modi,” the Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said.
Besides the erosion the BJP faced in the Hindi heartland of Uttar Pradesh, even Mr Modi’s personal performance in winning the Varanasi seat for the third consecutive term was far from being satisfactory. While he was expected to win the Varanasi seat even with a bigger margin than in the past considering the transformation he has brought about in his constituency in the last five years, Mr Modi could win the seat with just about 1.50 lakh votes compared to over five lakh votes margin he had won in 2019.
Many other BJP candidates have won their seats with much bigger margins than Mr Modi, including the former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan who won the Vidisha seat by a margin of about seven lakh votes and the union home minister Amit Shah who won the Gandhinagar seat in his home state of Gujarat by a margin of about five lakh votes. Incidentally, Mr Modi’s relatively poor performance come when Varanasi was considered to be no contest since the Congress has put up the same opponent who had lost against him twice, the UP party chief Ajay Rai.
Among the biggest talking points this election was the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, a poll promise of the BJP since the 1980s. The party’s supporters had been sure it would be a one of the decisive factors in the Lok Sabha elections. But the BP instead lost the Faizabad seat that include Ayodhya, to the Samajwadi Party despite campaigning against it as “anti-Sanatan Dharma.”
