https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-asia-india-69072275
With the majority of votes counted in India's general elections, the alliance of parties led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has reached the threshold of 272 seats needed to form a government. The ruling alliance led by Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party won 286 of India's 543 parliamentary seats, according to the election commission's website.
However, the party itself lost its absolute parliamentary majority, having received 240 confirmed mandates. At the same time, at the beginning of the election campaign, Modi set the party the task of winning 400 seats in parliament. The opposition alliance "India", led by the Indian National Congress party, won 193 seats, which turned out to be much higher than the predicted results. This, according to opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, means that the prime minister will have to abandon his most ambitious plans, including those related to changing the constitution.
The Indian National Congress, a party of the Gandhi dynasty, ruled the country until 2014, when it was first defeated by the nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. In these elections, he separately received 99 mandates. Rahul Gandhi himself - the son of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, the grandson of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the great-grandson of the first Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru, but not a descendant of Mahatma Gandhi - won in both constituencies in which he stood as a candidate, but has not yet confirmed which it is the district that he intends to represent in parliament.
Celebrating his victory, Modi said he was ready to form a new government. He also noted that the number of his party's supporters has doubled in some areas, including Delhi, promised to do everything to eradicate corruption at the root and assured that he intends to support the defense sector, youth and farmers.
However, the election results were a personal blow to Narendra Modi, who always won majorities in elections both as chief minister of Gujarat and as prime minister of India and dominated the country's politics for a decade. However, some opposition figures complained of an uneven playing field during the election period: some leaders were arrested and some parties said their bank accounts were frozen.
The largest elections on the planet took place over six weeks, with almost 1 billion people eligible to vote. As a result, more than 640 million voters cast ballots across the country.
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