A worker attaches a flag of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party to a panel depicting its leader and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, April 15, 2024.
Idrée Mohammed | Afp | Getty Images
Indians will go to the polls on Friday in what will be the world’s largest democratic election, as nearly a billion voters choose their next government and decide whether or not to give Prime Minister Narendra Modi a third term.
The 2024 general elections will be held in seven phases over the next six weeks, starting April 19.
Voters will decide who will occupy seats in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of India’s parliament, for the next five years. The Lok Sabha is the more powerful of the two houses of Parliament.
Whichever party or coalition wins a majority will lead the government and choose the next prime minister. Analysts widely expect Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party to win another landslide victory in the upcoming elections.
Here’s why elections in India matter.
India’s meteoric rise
That’s not all.
The Indian stock market overtook Hong Kong’s in December to become the fourth largest in the world and is now valued at more than $4 trillion.
Analysts expect Modi to win a third consecutive five-year term, boosting India’s growth trajectory.
“The growth story is not over. But private and foreign investment has been very subdued and exports have also declined,” Suyash Rai, deputy director and researcher at Carnegie India, told CNBC. “So I feel like there’s some weakness building up.”
U.S. President Joe Biden and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during an arrival ceremony during a state visit on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, June 22, 2023.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
India has forged deeper ties with the West over the past year, and Modi’s re-election could further strengthen U.S.-India relations, said Chietigj Bajpaee, senior fellow for the South Asia at Chatham House.
He said India is seen as a “bulwark against China” as the Biden administration continues to encourage US companies to move their electronics and technology manufacturing operations from China to friendlier countries , like India.
“If there are two countries where there is the highest degree of consensus, it is China as a long-term strategic rival and India as a long-term strategic partner. This will not change” , Bajpaee said.
Main competitors
There will be 543 seats contested in the lower house, and the party or coalition that wins at least 272 votes will form the government.
There are two main competitors: the BJP-led coalition, known as the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), and the opposition bloc known as the National Alliance for Indian Inclusive Development (INDIA).
The opposition coalition was formed last year when more than 40 opposition parties joined forces. It is led by the Indian National Congress whose figurehead is Rahul Gandhi – the son of Rajiv Gandhi, grandson of Indira Gandhi and great-grandson of Jawaharlal Nehru, all of whom served as prime ministers of India .
The Congress, which ruled the country for most of its post-independence period, suffered a crushing defeat in the 2014 and 2019 elections.
A worker repairs flags of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party displayed on a hoarding in Raipur on April 15, 2024, ahead of the country’s upcoming general elections.
Idrée Mohammed | Afp | Getty Images
This time, the BJP coalition bloc is expected to once again prevail over opposition parties and win a historic third term thanks to the political stability of the last decade, analysts say.
“Political coherence and political stability are deeply linked to each other, so the government that comes into office will be expected to be able to maintain that,” said Amitendu Palit, a senior researcher at the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore.
“This will be an important year for India, and I feel that whoever the Indian government is, the direction of foreign policy and economic policy will remain largely unchanged,” he told CNBC .
Modi was reported to have said in March that he was confident that the BJP and NDA would get a combined 400 seats.
Chatham’s Bajpaee said it was an “inevitability” that Modi’s BJP would take the reins again this year, but “what is not clear is the scale of the victory.”
“There is no need for the BJP to lose for the opposition to win. All they have to do is prove that the Modi brand has weakened if they do not perform as well as the last time,” he stressed.
Voters’ concerns
According to a survey conducted by the Center for the Study of Developing Societies, unemployment was the main concern for 27% of the 10,000 people questioned.
More than half (62%) of respondents also said it had become more difficult to find a job in the last five years of Modi’s second term.
“A lot of the population is still poor, so there are big disparities across the country,” Bajpaee said.
Rising costs are the second biggest concern, with 23% of voters surveyed saying it is their top concern. About 35% of respondents said that quality of life has decreased over the last five years.
About 13% said their biggest concern was the country’s development, and 8% said corruption was their biggest concern.
The election in numbers
It will be India’s largest-ever election, with some 968 million people registered to vote, 48% of them female voters, according to the Council of Foreign Relations. There will also be 18 million new voters, Reuters reported.
Given the large number of voters, the seven-phase elections will last for 44 days, from April 19 to June 1, in 554 constituencies, according to the Election Commission of India.
A poll official marks an electronic voting machine (EVM) at a distribution center in Coimbatore on April 11, 2024.
R.Satish Babu | Afp | Getty Images
The six-week election is expected to cost more than the 2020 US presidential election, where $14.4 billion was spent, according to Washington-based research firm OpenSecrets.
The company’s data showed that India spent $8.6 billion in the 2019 general election, $2.1 billion more than in the 2016 US presidential race.
The results will be published on June 4.
Election rules state that since there must be a polling station within two kilometers of each registered voter, there will be approximately 1.05 million polling stations, 5.5 million electronic voting machines and 15 million of employees and security guards overseeing the election, according to polling station data. the electoral commission showed it.
— CNBC’s Joanna Tan contributed to this report.
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