Poll woes: BJP’s vaulting ambition runs into coalition reality

livemint.com:

The hurly-burly is done. This year’s battle for India’s Lok Sabha, the world’s largest electoral exercise ever, was a story of vaulting ambition even by the high standards of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In what seemed like an open dare for his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), he set for it the target of a two-thirds majority in Parliament: 370 seats.

Sufficient not just to make ‘anti-incumbency’ history, but also emboss our political arena with the BJP’s seal of dominance. In Modi’s view, this aim of 370 stood for “unity," a reference to Kashmir’s integration by scrapping Article 370. In the opposition’s view, it reflected a BJP desire to alter the Constitution in line with its saffron ideology.

At the end of an election marked by sound and fury over quota carve-ups, minority decoys and other ploys, Modi’s party fell short of the halfway mark, winning a likely tally of about 240 seats in the 18th Lok Sabha. This descent from its 303-seat majority of 2019 has left it dependent on allies for power, a slide reflected in a stock-market crash on Tuesday. As reversals go, its significance lay in its surprise.

While a BJP ouster from office was always seen as a tail-end possibility at most, few foresaw how BJP losses in Uttar Pradesh (UP)—with only modest gains elsewhere—would loosen its tight grip on power and spell a novel prospect for Modi’s party: Its rule will now be subject to compulsions of coalition politics. The irony for the BJP is that it more or less retained its 2019 vote share of about 37%. Given an expanded base of 642 million voters and Modi’s own appeal as a leader, it’s valid to argue that he has set yet another record as a vote catcher.