Voting has already taken place for four phases of the Lok Sabha election 2024. The nation will cast its votes for the final phase on 1st June and with this, the fate of the candidates on 543 seats will be sealed in the Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) boxes. The nation will then wait for 4th June for the results. This date will reveal the position of the camel in the nation’s political system. We will know if the opposition has been blown away in the wind by the popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government or if there are signs of some change.
2014: Vacate the throne for public
Dates have great importance in politics, and if we go back 10 years then on this day i.e. 16th May 2014 the election results of the 16th Lok Sabha were declared and at around 11 am, it was evident that the balance of power had shifted. Power is going to be snatched from the hands of one family. The Prime Minister of the country is going to be a person from a humble background, elected by popular vote rather than at the whim of any particular political family.
The 16th Lok Sabha elections were announced on 16th May 2014 and the public showered the BJP with a historic mandate when the results were announced in the afternoon. The party had achieved 282 seats and, for the first time, surpassed the threshold of a clear majority on its own. The BJP had reached the pinnacle of power even during the reign of former Prime minister late Atal Bihari Vajpayee but could not even cross the 200 mark on its own.
BJP, which was out of power for 10 years since 2004, had in 2013 presented Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as its prime ministerial candidate amidst rampant scams and corruption. His charismatic personality created a ‘Modi wave’ among the public. He chose Uttar Pradesh’s Varanasi along with Vadodara in Gujarat as his constituencies and the citizens decided to make him the prime minister and gave a resounding majority to the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
‘Ghar-Ghar Modi, Har-Har Modi’, a slogan that reverberated from Kashi, sustained the Modi wave across the country and as a result, under the leadership of Narendra Modi, the BJP became the first political party to secure a clear mandate in three decades in addition to managing to secure a majority on its own. A further unique aspect of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections was the steep downfall of the Congress party with only 44 seats after nearly 50 years of unabated dominance and 10 years of continued power in the centre. Congress lacked the necessary standing to hold the role of Leader of the Opposition. The party would scarcely have imagined a humiliating loss like this.
2019: Public declared – The show must go on
Furthermore, the BJP made optimum use of the majority bestowed upon it by the populace to drastically alter the course of events in the nation during the next five years. India witnessed firsthand how millions of bank accounts were opened in a matter of months, millions of homes were constructed in a matter of years and millions of households received gas cylinders without a single hitch.
The BJP was able to pass long-pending laws like the GST owing to this 282 figure. For the first time, the people observed that funds from Delhi could benefit crores of people in this country without being deployed for unethical purposes. During this period, the BJP established the framework for significant issues including Article 370, Ram Mandir, and Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). The BJP not only strengthened the nation throughout these five years, but it also developed into such an effective electoral machine that the opposition was forced to crumble.
The outcomes of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections support the notion that the BJP’s first term brought about a great deal of change. The results of the 17th Lok Sabha on 23rd May 2024 verified the same. In the annals of Indian democracy, no party other than the Congress has ever exceeded the 300 mark and the BJP gained 303 seats. The liberal and leftist factions that view each election as a referendum on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s reputation have also been silenced by these outcomes.
While the BJP earned an impressive majority in 2019, the situation facing the Congress and other opposition parties remained largely unchanged. The Congress only added 8 seats to its tally, in 5 years. It stood at 44 in 2014 and rose to 52 in 2019. However, the Congress incurred greater damage than it did in 2014 when its most prominent leader, Rahul Gandhi, lost in Amethi to BJP leader Smriti Irani.
4 June 2024: Strong indications of a third term
The BJP has set a goal to cross the figure of 370 in this year’s general election following landmark victories in 2014 and 2019. The BJP is completing a decade of governance with this round of Lok Sabha election. It is noteworthy, however, that the atmosphere that existed in 2013–14 after a decade of Congress government is nowhere to be seen this time. There are no protests like the Jan Lokpal Bill movement or any corruption charges against the BJP government.
The common people appear to be content with the BJP and are not opposed to the current government, despite what political analysts refer to as the ‘fatigue factor’ or just feeling bored. Most political experts and journalists, with the exception of a small number who still believe in 24, Akbar Road, are convinced the BJP and Narendra Modi will triumph handsomely and return to Delhi.
A recent statement released by Union Home Minister Amit Shah in West Bengal is an example of how confident the party is about its victory. He expressed, “Elections have been held on 380 seats in the country and out of these 380 seats, PM Modi has crossed the majority mark by winning 270 seats. The battle ahead is to cross 400,” in a public meeting in the state. All things considered, it is certain that the BJP has successfully maintained its influence in this Lok Sabha election. All the attacks of the opposition are going in vain. However, India won’t know the outcome until 4th June of this year.
Read the article in Hindi here.
