In a curious case of ascending the throne, yet stumbling to the ground, Narendra Modi is beginning his third term as Indian Prime Minister. It has to be a historic moment, yet his supporters, with their numbers fast depleting, are downcast. Modi’s opponents, though out of power, are ecstatic. His ouster, which was a remote possibility a few weeks ago, looks imminent.
Modi, who began his political career as a volunteer for the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the fountainhead of his Bharatiya Janata Party, was catapulted to political stage as a filler chief minister of his home state Gujarat when former CM Keshubhai Patel ran asunder with the party in 2001. The plan, according to BJP insiders, was to plant Modi until a suitable option was found.
But Modi proved lucky and an earthquake struck Gujarat. His diligence and deftness as an indefatigable administrator ensured the state would not cave in and he would not lose his chair. Later, when 2002 communal mayhem burnt Gujarat and everyone bayed for his head, he survived again. Since then, he has been invincible and never gone out of power.
He has been ruling as PM since 2014. However, as the proverbial descent is the fate even of the mightiest mountains, Modi’s downfall has been ushered in too. It was long coming, and the 2024 election has paved the road inch by inch.
Hubris and the revenge of mandate
The world over, especially in recent elections, populist strongmen are getting uprooted. Last week, the ruling African National Congress party lost its majority in South Africa. Claudia Sheinbaum, a woman, and Jewish by descent, won a landslide to become President of Mexico last week.
Just after the first phase of polling, Modi pulled out old rabbits from his hat, the Musalmaan, Pakistan, Mandir, and even references to the mangal sutra. He uttered Musalmaan at least 421 times in the short span of his campaign.
Around 60 countries of the world have already gone to vote, or are poised to decide the future of their leaders in 2024.
The shocker was delivered when Modi began to feel divinely unassailable. During campaign rallies and a barrage of media interviews, he declared himself as someone who was not “biological,” but someone sent by Lord for a special purpose – an allegory reminiscent of Hindu beliefs in some humans being incarnations of God.
Even his allies were peeved with his constant invocations of "Modi did this and Modi will do that.” And when he realized that the theme of his party’s campaign – Modi Ki Guarantee -- was not working, he slipped into his hardline avatar. Just after the first phase of polling, Modi pulled out old rabbits from his hat, the Musalmaan, Pakistan, Mandir, and even references to the mangal sutra. He uttered Musalmaan at least 421 times in the short span of his campaign.
This strategy surely must have worked, as BJP still secured as much of a vote share as it did in 2019. But the vitriol backfired where it should have run amok: Ayodhya, where the party built the grand Ram Temple just before the elections. The party lost the seat to a Dalit candidate, who doesn’t even have a right to enter the sanctum sanctorum of the temple. And since the town is full of lower castes like him, the temple proved to be no savior for the BJP.
Ashok Yadav, a local, said that the trust of the temple is a den of graft that is minting money through religious tourism, selling land at exorbitant prices, renting out guest houses and keeping locals away from both priesthood and worship.
Awadhesh Prasad, the elected MP, added that the locals were uprooted and their houses demolished in the name of Ram. “They (BJP) brought Ram but displaced poor locals. How would they be pardoned?” said Prasad.
Such resentment travelled well beyond Ayodhya. The BJP has 5 of 9 seats within a 100 km radius of the temple town.
Overall, the party has faced backlash from rural India and caste blocs. Around 5% of party’s vote share has dipped in villages, despite many of the Modi government’s pro-poor schemes like free ration, health insurance and subsidized housing being popular.
One more major setback for Modi’s BJP was in his constituency Varanasi. Modi won, but his winning margin plummeted by more than 300,000 votes and his party lost 9 out of 12 seats in the Varanasi region. Again, this was a revolt of rural and caste bloc voters.
Setbacks aside, Modi’s BJP has maintained dominance in states like Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and have made inroads into the Southern states. But these gains are vulnerable to gradual corrosion if the party keeps slipping in the Hindi heartland, where it has traditionally been the strongest.
In 2019, BJP had won 224 seats with a 50% vote share. In 2024, it managed to win only 156 seats out of 240 with that margin. Another slump. These numbers soared for the opposition INDIA bloc candidates.
In UP, the architect of the turnaround in INDIA’s fortunes, lower castes like OBCs and Dalits moved away from BJP. The Jatav Dalits of Mayawati’s party BSP preferred the SP-Congress alliance to BJP. Clubbed with berserk Muslim votes, it changed the scene in the heartland state of India.
The same script was enacted in states like Maharashtra and West Bengal.
Setbacks aside, Modi’s BJP has maintained dominance in states like Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and have made inroads into the Southern states. But these gains are vulnerable to gradual corrosion if the party keeps slipping in the Hindi heartland, where it has traditionally been the strongest. In fact, any hint of party unraveling in the Centre, advances made on the margins will be rolled back sooner than later.
Setbacks at the hands of separatists
One part of “brand Modi” has been his image as a strong, decisive, zero tolerance leader when it comes to national security and dealing with separatism. He locked all separatists, even those who were not in jail after the nullification of Article 370 on 5 August 2019. Many perished in custody. One such leader is Sheikh Abdul Rashid. He is a maverick former engineer of the Public Works Department of Jammu & Kashmir. In 2019, he was arrested under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), and imprisoned in Delhi’s famous Tihar Jail, from where he defeated Kashmir’s most famous dynast Omar Abdullah, getting 472,481 votes against 268,339.
As the numbers indicate, the victory was overwhelming.
While post-Article 370 Kashmir lapsed into the background, Punjab came to haunt New Delhi and several self-styled leaders openly started whipping up frenzy for Khalistan, a separate state claimed by militant-minded Sikh Punjabis, who are also backed by diasporas settled abroad in Canada, US and Europe.
One such leader is Sheikh Abdul Rashid. He is a maverick former engineer of the Public Works Department of Jammu & Kashmir. In 2019, he was arrested under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), and imprisoned in Delhi’s famous Tihar Jail, from where he defeated Kashmir’s most famous dynast Omar Abdullah, getting 472,481 votes against 268,339.
Amritpal Singh Sandhu is one such character. Born only in 1993, a returnee from Dubai, he launched himself in the style of Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, who inspired an armed rebellion in search of Khalistan that bled Punjab and led to a sequence of violence incidents from Operation Blue Star, an assault on the holy Golden Temple in Amritsar between June 1 and 10, 1984, to the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on October 31 that year.
After his return to Punjab from Dubai, Sandhu spearheaded Waris Punjab De, with a militant wing known as Anandpur Khalsa Fauj. Initially, his group focused on freeing young people from the clutch of drugs, but soon his cadres demonstrated bigger ambitions. On March 18, 2023, Punjab Police began sustained action against Waris Punjab De. Sandhu was arrested on April 23, 2023 in Moga under the National Security Act, and sent to a jail in Assam. From this distant lock-up, Sandhu won from the Khadur Sahib constituency by a margin of 197,130 votes.
Barely 100 km from Khadur Sahib is Faridkot. The city saw the victory of another rebel. Sarabjeet Singh Khalsa won with a comfortable margin of 70,053 votes over AAP nominee Karamjit Anmol, an actor and friend of the Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Singh Mann. Khalsa is son of Beant Singh, a bodyguard of Indira Gandhi, and was deeply grieved by Operation Blue Star.
These three victories will hang as a badge of dishonor for Modi, whose reputation will suffer dents. When this information will seep into the public memory, the PM will be knocked down by several notches.
The fall of Modi ministers
The cabinet of PM Narendra Modi has been judiciously picked and adjusted. While many men have been given portfolios purely on merit, some have bene granted entry through a proverbial lateral entrance. Smriti Irani, the minister with minority affairs as her last portfolio, was alien to politics and lost her debut election in 2014, yet the PM picked her and handed over coveted the HRD ministry, or ministry of education.
When Irani beat Congress star Rahul Gandhi from Amethi, UP, his family borough, she herself became a star. Her political fortunes became the foil of fables. According to one RSS insider, she was being seen by the Sangh as the successor of Modi: “she is articulate, in sync with the Sangh agenda, courageous, a fighter and a woman.”
An aggressive, but good orator, she can handle both English and Hindi with panache. But, with little political experience, she has fumbled with, and that too quite frequently. Being a former TV star, she has also been prone to making tantrums and languishing into unwanted controversies. She was nevertheless backed and groomed by the PM.
When Irani beat Congress star Rahul Gandhi from Amethi, UP, his family borough, she herself became a star. Her political fortunes became the foil of fables. According to one RSS insider, she was being seen by the Sangh as the successor of Modi: “she is articulate, in sync with the Sangh agenda, courageous, a fighter and a woman.”
However, in politics, fortune favors those in the good books of the public, not power. Irani was mostly absent from her constituency and being an outsider - she is from Gujarat - she was not able to harness rapport with Awadhis.
Sensing a changing caste equation on the ground and the looming doom of Irani, Congress fielded Kishori Lal Sharma, a poll campaign manager of party matriarch Sonia Gandhi in Rae Bareli, to challenge Irani. She lost by a margin of 167,196 votes. Her political future rested on Modi’s support, which will perhaps start slipping fast.
Another notable minister that has been grounded is bahubali (muscleman) Ajay Mishra Teni from Lakhimpur, UP. His son has mowed down farmers during the farmer protest and is facing murder charges. The upper caste leader was junior minister of home affairs, a powerful ministry in the Modi cabinet. He was trounced by a low caste candidate Utkarsh Verma by 34,329 votes. His clout flunked.
Another Modi lieutenant and chosen minister who has tasted defeat is former Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar. He lost to Congress stalwart Shashi Tharoor by over 16,077 votes. Chandrasekhar is co-owner of Republic TV along with anchor Arnab Goswami. His defeat will reverberate as loud as Goswami’s voice.
The defeat of Tribal Affairs Minister Arun Munda similarly matters as he has been the tribal face in the Modi cabinet and since the BJP performed well in his home state Jharkhand, his defeat will directly reflect on the popularity of PM Modi among the tribal population. He lost to Congress candidate Kalicharan Munda by 149,675 votes.
In Rajasthan’s Barmer, Minister of State for Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare, Kailash Choudhary, finished third, trailing by 448,000 votes behind the victorious Ummeda Ram Beniwal of the Congress. A Modi cabinet minister finishing third in a state where BJP romped to power only a few months back reveals how the scene rapidly changed in these parliamentary polls.
The BJP's setbacks weren't limited to these prominent figures. Ministers such as Mahendra Nath Pandey, Kaushal Kishore, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, Sanjeev Balyan, Rao Saheb Danve, RK Singh, V Muraleedharan, L Murugan, Subhas Sarkar and Nishith Pramanik also faced defeats in the polls.
Mahendra Nath Pandey, the Union Minister of Heavy Industries lost his Chandauli seat in Uttar Pradesh. Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs, Kaushal Kishore lost against Samajwadi Party’s RK Chaudhary by 70,292 votes in Mohanlalganj.
Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, the Union Minister of State for Consumer Affairs, Food, and Public Distribution, lost in UP's Fatehpur. Rao Saheb Danve, the Minister of State for Railways, lost the Jalna seat in Maharashtra to Congress' Kalyan Vaijnath Rao Kale. Cabinet Minister Rk Singh lost to CPI(ML)’s Sudama Prasad from Bihar’s Arrah.
Union Minister Sanjeev Balyan was defeated in the Muzaffarnagar Lok Sabha seat by Samajwadi Party’s Harendra Singh Malik by a margin of over 24,000 votes.
V Muraleedharan, the Union Minister of State for External Affairs and Parliamentary Affairs, was defeated in Kerala's Thiruvananthapuram. L Murugan, the Minister of State for Fisheries, Animal Husbandry, and Dairying, lost to DMK's A Raja in Tamil Nadu's Nilgiris by a substantial margin of 2,40,585 votes.
Nishith Pramanik, the Union Minister of State for Home Affairs, lost the Cooch Behar seat in West Bengal to TMC's Jagadish Chandra Basunia by over 39,000 votes.
The Minister of State for Education Subhas Sarkar was defeated by Trinamool Congress candidate Arup Chakraborty in the Bankura Lok Sabha seat of West Bengal by a margin of 32,778 votes.