India elections: Modi lead narrowing as opposition 'doing better than expected'
India begins counting votes for its 2024 general election, with early trends showing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s alliance may fall short of a majority as the opposition is doing better than expected.
The vote counting began in key centers in each state on Tuesday, with Modi eyeing a rare third consecutive term.
"People should know about the strength of Indian democracy", chief election commissioner Rajiv Kumar said on Monday, vowing there was a "robust counting process in place."
Early trends showed a much better than expected performance for the opposition INDIA bloc.
Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led alliance was seen as leading in just around 295 seats, while the opposition INDIA alliance led by Rahul Gandhi’s Congress party was shown as leading in 226 seats of the 543-member lower house of parliament.
“Should early trends hold, this will be a setback for the prime minister and for the BJP, which had set its target high at 400 seats,” political analyst Gilles Verniers told Al Jazeera.
Javed Ansari, another political analyst, told the TV network that the competition so far between the BJP-led alliance and the opposition is much closer than predicted.
A party or alliance that wins more than 272 seats in the 543-member parliament can form the government
The surprising early trends came while exit polls had predicted a landslide victory for Modi’s party in the general elections that concluded on Saturday.
Some 642 million people of the 968 million registered voters cast their ballots in seven stages of the country’s six-week-long election.
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