Modi’s alliance dominates early in India election vote count, but opposition also gains
The early see-saw trends unnerved markets with stocks falling steeply. The NIFTY 50 and the S&P BSE Sensex were both down over 2 per cent at 5am GMT. The rupee also fell against the dollar and benchmark bond yields were up.
The markets had soared on Monday after on June 1 projected Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would register a big victory, with its National Democratic Alliance (NDA) seen getting a two-thirds majority and more.
At 4:30am GMT, TV channels showed the NDA was ahead in nearly 300 of the 543 elective seats in parliament, a simple majority, in early counting. The opposition INDIA alliance led by Rahul Gandhi’s Congress party was leading in over 200 seats, higher than expected.
Only about 10pc-15pc of the total votes had been counted at the time, TV channels said.
BJP alone accounted for nearly 250 of the seats in which the NDA was leading, compared to the 303 it won in 2019. Trends also showed Modi leading first, then trailing and leading again in his seat in the Hindu holy city of Varanacai.
The first votes counted were postal ballots, which are paper ballots, mostly cast by troops serving outside their home constituencies or officials away from home on election duty. This year, postal votes were also offered to voters over 85 years of age and people with disabilities to allow them to vote from home.
Counting is expected to last several hours as the large majority of votes polled in electronic voting machines or EVMs are taken up after the first 30 minutes of counting postal ballots.
“These are very early trends, we are going to see better results as the day progresses,” Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera said.
TV exit polls broadcast after voting ended on June 1 projected a big win for Modi, but exit polls have often got election outcomes wrong in India. Nearly one billion people were registered to vote, of which 642 million turned out.
Modi said at the weekend he was confident that “the people of India have voted in record numbers” to re-elect his government, a decade after he first became prime minister.
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Observers believe his appeals to growing Hindu nationalist sentiment will give him a third term in power.
Modi’s opponents have struggled to counter the campaign juggernaut of his BJP, and have been hamstrung by infighting and what they say are politically motivated criminal cases aimed at hobbling challengers.
Votes were cast on electronic voting machines, so the tally will likely be rapid, with results expected within hours.
Counting began on Tuesday morning in key centres in each state, with the data fed into computers.
“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”.
India’s major TV networks will have reporters outside each counting centre, competing to flash results for each of the 543 elected seats in the lower house of parliament.
In past years, key trends have been clear by mid-afternoon with losers conceding defeat, even though full and final results may only come late on Tuesday night.
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