On April 15, 2024, a worker fixed the flag of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party to the symbol of the party leader and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Idris Mohammed | AFP | Getty Images
Indians will go to the polls on Friday in what will be the world’s largest democratic election, with nearly a billion voters electing their next government and deciding whether to give Prime Minister Narendra Modi a third term.
this 2024 election It will be carried out in seven phases over the next six weeks, starting on April 19.
Voters will decide who will fill seats in the Lok Sabha, India’s lower house of parliament, over 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 score another landslide victory in the upcoming election.
This is why Indian elections are so important.
India’s rapid rise
That’s not all.
indian stock market It surpassed Hong Kong in December last year and became the fourth largest financial center in the world, with a current valuation of more than US$4 trillion.
Analysts expect Modi to win a third consecutive five-year term, further boosting India’s growth trajectory.
“The growth story is not over yet. But private and foreign investment are very subdued and exports are also down,” Suyash Rai, deputy director and fellow at Carnegie India, told CNBC. “So I think there’s some Weaknesses are accumulating.”
U.S. President Joe Biden and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrive at the arrival ceremony during their state visit on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, June 22, 2023.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Kittyji Bajpayee, senior fellow for South Asia at Chatham House, said India has built deeper ties with the West over the past year and Modi’s re-election is likely to further strengthen U.S.-India relations.
He said India is seen as a “bulwark against China” as the Biden administration continues to encourage U.S. companies to shift electronics and technology manufacturing operations away from China to friendlier countries such as India.
“If there are two countries that have reached the highest level of consensus, it is China as a long-term strategic competitor and India as a long-term strategic partner. This will not change,” Bajpayee said.
main competitors
There will be 543 seats in the House of Commons up for grabs, with a party or coalition winning at least 272 votes forming the government.
There are two main contenders: the Bharatiya Janata Party-led alliance, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), and the opposition group, the Indian Alliance for Development and Inclusion (INDIA).
The opposition alliance was formed last year by more than 40 opposition parties. It is led by the Indian National Congress, headed by Rahul Gandhi, son of Rajiv Gandhi, grandson of Indira Gandhi, and great-grandson of Jawaharlal Nehru, both of whom served as Prime Minister of India.
The Congress party, which ruled the country for most of its post-independence period, suffered heavy defeats in the 2014 and 2019 elections.
A worker repairs the flag of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party hanging on a wall in Raipur, April 15, 2024, ahead of the country’s upcoming general elections.
Idris Mohammed | AFP | Getty Images
Analysts say this time, thanks to the political stability of the past decade, the BJP’s coalition is widely expected to once again defeat the opposition and win a historic third term.
“Policy coherence and political stability are closely linked. So we expect the new government to maintain that,” said Amitendu Palit, a senior fellow at the Institute of South Asia Studies at the National University of Singapore.
“This is going to be a big year for India, and I have a feeling that the direction of foreign policy and the direction of economic policy will remain largely the same no matter who is in the government,” he told CNBC.
Modi It is said March said he was confident that the BJP and NDA would win a combined 400 seats.
Chatham’s Bajpayee said it was “a foregone conclusion” that Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party would return to power this year, but “the scale of the victory is not yet clear”.
“You don’t need the BJP to lose for the opposition to win. All they need to do is prove that if they don’t perform as well as last time, Modi’s brand has been weakened,” he stressed.
voters’ concerns
According to a survey by the Center for the Study of Developing Societies, Unemployment is the biggest concern 27% of the 10,000 respondents said.
More than half (62%) of respondents also said finding a job has become more difficult in the past five years of Modi’s second term.
“There is still a large portion of the population living in poverty, so there are huge disparities across the country,” Bajpayee said.
Rising costs were the second biggest concern, with 23% of voters surveyed saying it was their top concern.About 35% of the respondents said Decline in quality of life in the past five years.
About 13% said they were most worried about the country’s development, and 8% said corruption was their biggest concern.
election numbers
It will be India’s largest election to date, with about 968 million people registered to vote, 48% of whom are women voters, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.There will be 18 million First-time voters, Reuters reports.
The Election Commission of India said that taking into account the large number of voters, the election will be divided into seven phases, lasting 44 days from April 19 to June 1.
Polling officials mark electronic voting machines (EVMs) 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 U.S. presidential election, which cost $14.4 billion, the Washington-based research firm said open secret.
The company’s data shows that India spent $8.6 billion on the 2019 election, $2.1 billion more than the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.
Results will be announced on June 4.
election rules It said that since there must be a polling station within two kilometers of every registered voter, there will be about 1.05 million polling stations, 5.5 million electronic voting machines and 15 million staff and security personnel to monitor the election, data Electoral Commission shows.
— CNBC’s Joanna Tan contributed to this report.
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