Modi Declares Election Victory as the BJP Suffers Surprise Losses

Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at India’s election results, new asylum restrictions at the U.S.-Mexico border, and a proposed Israel-Hamas cease-fire deal.

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A Thin Majority

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is poised to secure a consecutive third term in office, the country’s Election Commission projected on Tuesday, making him the second leader to do so since the country declared independence in 1947. “This is a historical feat in India’s history,” Modi wrote on X.

But the worse-than-expected nationwide performance of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) largely overshadowed the right-wing leader’s electoral victory. Commission results as of early Wednesday indicated that the BJP had secured 240 seats, falling well short of the 272 seats needed to secure a single-party majority in Parliament. That means that, for the first time since Modi took the helm a decade ago, the BJP will have to rely on smaller parties in the larger National Democratic Alliance, which with the BJP secured more than 290 seats combined, to form a coalition government.

This is also the first time that Modi has failed to secure a major majority in state or national elections since beginning his 23-year political career. “Modi is still popular. But what people saw in this campaign was not a leader, but an increasingly self-aggrandising figure, a prisoner of his own delusions of divinity,” Indian political scientist Pratap Bhanu Mehta wrote for the Indian Express on Tuesday.

Modi took office as prime minister in 2014 and has since pushed a Hindu-nationalist agenda to consolidate his power. He has targeted minority populations, undermined India’s commitment to secularism, and eroded the country’s free press and independent judicial institutions. Under his rule, India became the world’s fifth-largest economy and overtook China to become the most populous nation in 2023.

The BJP devoted a significant amount of time campaigning in key contested states—only to fall short of its predicted landslide wins. In January, Modi inaugurated a temple to the Hindu deity Ram in the city of Ayodhya, which Hindus believe is Ram’s birthplace but Muslims say has been the home of the Babri Masjid mosque for generations. Not only did Modi hope to bolster his Hindu-nationalist agenda with the project, but he also aimed to rally electoral support more broadly in Uttar Pradesh, which sends the highest number of lawmakers to Parliament of any state. The BJP, however, lost nearly half of its seats in Uttar Pradesh, the Election Commission reported on Tuesday, including Ayodhya.

Modi’s party also failed to secure any of the 39 seats in Tamil Nadu, a state that the BJP heavily campaigned in. This election “marks not only the end of single-party control in the Indian Parliament but also the BJP’s having peaked,” political scientist Devesh Kapur wrote for Foreign Policy.

Experts point to voters’ economic concerns as a major factor in the BJP’s underwhelming performance. India’s economy “has simply been unable to supply decent jobs in adequate numbers,” Kapur explained. “More and more Indians have formal education credentials but meager skills, a sad testimony to the poor quality of the country’s education system. Rising aspirations are hitting the brick wall of precarious jobs as India continues to struggle to strengthen its manufacturing sector.” Unfortunately for Modi, “ideologies do not address the quotidian challenges facing voters,” Kapur wrote.

The election results appeared to spook India’s stock markets. The benchmark NIFTY 50 sank 5.9 percent on Tuesday, wiping out almost all of its gains in 2024. These were the steepest declines on an election outcome day in India since 2004. The rupee also dropped sharply against the U.S. dollar.

Today’s Most Read

What We’re Following

Asylum restrictions. U.S. President Joe Biden announced a new executive measure on Tuesday that denies migrants who illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico border from claiming asylum for at least five years. Under the temporary restrictions, migrants may be deported to Mexico and can face criminal charges. Unaccompanied children, people facing medical or safety threats, and trafficking victims are exempt from the new policy.

The measures will only be implemented when the daily average of border arrests supersedes 2,500 in a week, a U.S. official said. Rates on Tuesday were past that level. The Biden administration hopes the restrictions will help curb unauthorized migration ahead of the November U.S. presidential election, in which Democrats’ alleged weak border security policies have become a prime rallying point for the Republican Party and former U.S. President Donald Trump.

Following the announcement, the American Civil Liberties Union said it plans to sue the Biden administration over its new executive action, as it did when Trump imposed a travel ban in 2017 on migrants from seven majority-Muslim nations. The right to seek asylum is enshrined in both U.S. and international law.

Cease-fire proposal. Washington urged the United Nations Security Council on Monday to support the U.S.-backed, three-phase cease-fire plan in Gaza that Biden announced last Friday. The deal includes a “full and complete cease-fire” as well as the release of all hostages and the withdrawal of all Israeli troops from the embattled territory, among other requirements. Although Biden on Friday characterized the deal as an Israeli proposal, neither Israel nor Hamas has formally accepted the plan.

Two key far-right Israeli officials, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday that if he accepts any deal that stops short of completely destroying Hamas, then they will withdraw from his coalition and thus bring down the government. Meanwhile, centrist war cabinet minister Benny Gantz has threatened to withdraw his party from Netanyahu’s ruling coalition if the prime minister does not present a postwar plan for Gaza by Saturday.

Targeted IRGC official. Suspected Israeli airstrikes killed an Iranian military advisor near the Syrian city of Aleppo on Monday. Saeed Abyar was the first Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officer to be killed in an alleged Israeli attack since Israel bombed an Iranian consulate building in Damascus on April 1, which sparked a slew of retaliatory strikes. Sixteen other people were killed in Monday’s strike. Tehran has not yet commented on the assault.

Mayor killed in Mexico. Armed assailants killed a female Mexican mayor on Monday just hours after the country celebrated electing its first female president. Yolanda Sánchez was shot 19 times while entering a gym in the southwestern town of Cotija, where she has served as the area’s first female mayor since September 2021. Her bodyguard was also killed in the attack.

Local media suspect that an organized crime group was responsible for the assault. Since taking office, Sánchez had received numerous death threats, and in 2023, gunmen believed to be with Jalisco Cartel New Generation kidnapped her in the neighboring state of Jalisco and held her captive for three days.

Rampant cartel violence, including against public officials, was a top priority for voters in Mexico’s general election last Sunday. Former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, who secured a landslide victory, has said she plans to continue outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s controversial policy of “hugs, not bullets,” focusing on the social causes behind gang violence rather than targeting the groups themselves.

Odds and Ends

With summer rolling in, Finnish authorities are discouraging students from partying—to the tune of Beethoven and Bach. For the past six years, police in the coastal city of Espoo have blasted classical music to prevent young people from celebrating the end of the school term at a local beach. This year’s playlist includes Johann Strauss’s The Blue Danube, Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, and Franz Schubert’s Ave Maria. If you prefer a little symphonic music with your swimming, though, two loudspeakers will blare the orchestral tracks every evening from 6:30 to 11:30 p.m.

The post Modi Declares Election Victory as the BJP Suffers Surprise Losses appeared first on Foreign Policy.