India’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has been in power in the country since 2014, failed to secure an outright parliamentary majority in the country’s general elections.

The BJP, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, won 240 seats, down from 303 in 2019. The party is still set to retain power in the country with the support of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance bloc, which secured 293 seats overall.

The opposition coalition, the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance, performed better than expected, securing 232 seats. The coalition is yet to concede at the time of writing.

As in previous election campaigns, the BJP continued to promote a Hindu nationalist agenda in an effort to appeal to India’s Hindu majority. At a rally in Rajasthan on 21 April, Prime Minister Modi made an obvious reference to Muslims in which he described them as ‘infiltrators’ and suggested that the opposition would redistribute the property of Hindus to Muslims if they came to power.

CSW’s Founder President Mervyn Thomas said: ‘India’s election results clearly demonstrate that the BJP’s aggressive drive to promote a Hindu nationalist agenda has not been widely successful, despite their predictions of a landslide victory. We hope that these results will be a wake-up call to the BJP to reassess its decades-long embrace of toxic religious rhetoric and heavy-handed treatment of those seeking to defend human rights in the country, and its failure to address persisting inequality and unemployment.’