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28 March 2024

Majority forecast boosts Modi as rivals flounder

Polling agents check electronic voting machines after collecting them at a distribution center ahead of the fifth phase of Indian parliamentary elections in Udhampur, 62 km from Jammu on Tuesday April 15. The multiphase voting across the country runs until May 12, with results for the 543-seat lower house of Parliament announced May 16. (AP)

Published
By AFP

Nationalist opposition leader Narendra Modi and his allies were forecast to win an overall majority in India's elections in a poll on Tuesday, dealing another blow to the beleaguered ruling Congress party.

Eight days on from the start of the world's biggest election, the survey for the NDTV network predicted for the first time that Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would not have to seek new partners in order to govern.

The poll also forecast that Congress, which has governed India for most of the post-independence era, would hit an all-time low in results on May 16, highlighting the damage wrought by allegations of a split leadership.

Two books released this week have portrayed outgoing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as a weak leader who struggled to control his cabinet over the last decade while party president Sonia Gandhi called the shots.

There was further bad news for Congress when official data showed the year-on-year inflation rate accelerated in March to a three-month high of 5.7 per cent, dashing hopes of an interest rate cut to boost the struggling economy.

With Congress in disarray, NDTV forecast that the BJP-led opposition alliance would win 275 seats in the 543-seat Lok Sabha (lower house of parliament), 16 more than predicted in the last survey a month ago.

The BJP on its own would win 226 seats but it would avoid the need to find new coalition partners since its existing allies would push it over the 50 percent threshold, the survey said. Congress would see its tally of seats drop to a record low of 92, the same poll projected.

India's opinion polls are historically unreliable, partly because of the country's vast and diverse electorate. But the latest one reflects a growing trend of support for the BJP and flagging popularity for Congress.

"There are two clear trends in the groundswell, anger against the Congress and the hope in Narendra Modi," Arun Jaitley, one of the BJP's senior leaders, said in a blog after the poll's release.

"My own view is that the actual poll always results in the frontrunner getting more than what is projected," he added.

All previous polls have forecast that the BJP-led alliance would fall short of a majority, thus forcing it to seek additional partners who would likely want to temper some of the more controversial policy goals.

Analysts had been predicting that any Hindutva (Hindu nationalist) projects that Modi might seek to project in power would likely be limited by the compulsions of coalition politics.

If the BJP-led alliance does fall short of a majority, it is expected to try and strike a deal with the West Bengal-based Trinamool party which was forecast by NDTV to be the third largest party with 30 seats.

Trinamool's firebrand leader Mamata Banerjee said Tuesday the idea of a Modi premiership was "fantasy".

But in the same interview Banerjee, a former coalition ally of Congress, indicated she was open to offers as long as West Bengal benefited. 

"Bengal does not need to go with a begging bowl. We are only asking for what is due to us," she told the Press Trust of India news agency.

The marathon elections began on April 7 and will wrap up on May 12. Results are expected four days later.