Hindu nationalist party leader Narendra Modi has been sworn in for a third term as India’s Prime Minister – but the loss of his own party’s majority may offer some hope for the country’s persecuted Christian community.
The country’s General Election was held over several weeks, and the results were closer than many had predicted. Of the 543 seats in the lower house of parliament, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) secured a total of 293 seats. However, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won only 240 of these – thereby losing its single-party majority.
Release International’s partner for India said, ‘Modi won but he also lost and now he must decide how he will govern. The facts are clear: the Prime Minister and his colleagues campaigned for a supermajority of 370-plus seats, leading up to 400 seats along with their allies. Some of the BJP leaders had openly articulated that they needed this majority to literally change the constitution so that India’s laws would be dictated by India’s Hindu majority,’ he said.
Opinion surveys had predicted a decisive victory for the BJP and its NDA coalition.
However, the BJP’s 240 seats was down from the 303 it had secured in the last election, in 2019. The opposition coalition did better than expected, winning a total of 234 seats, with 99 being won by the Congress Party.
‘This election was a catastrophic blow to [the BJP’s] policy agenda. There is no other way to interpret it,’ our partner continued.
Incidents of violence against Christians in India have been rising in recent years. The Religious Liberty Commission of the Evangelical Fellowship of India reported earlier this year a record 601 cases of persecution in 2023 – a 45 per cent increase on the previous year.
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