Modi’s appeal clouded in India by prices, jobs, graft: Survey
NEW DELHI: Lack of jobs, high inflation and falling income in India led voters to rein in support for Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the general election where his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) failed to win a majority, according to a survey.
NEW DELHI: India's Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi (center) addresses a press conference at the party headquarters in New Delhi on June 6, 2024. -- AFP.
Modi’s was named the leader on Wednesday of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) that won a simple majority, the first time his Hindu nationalist BJP has to lean on regional parties for support to form the government.
The NDA won 293 seats in the 543-member lower house of parliament, more than the simple majority of 272 seats needed to form a government. However, his party BJP won only 240 seats. The INDIA alliance led by Rahul Gandhi’s centrist Congress party won over 232 seats, more than forecast.
At least 30 percent of voters said they were worried about inflation, a jump from the 20 percent prior to the election, according to a survey by Lokniti-CSDS, the Hindu newspaper said. The agency spoke to nearly 20,000 voters across 23 of India’s 28 states throughout the voting period, it said. The Hindu said that in an earlier survey conducted before the election, unemployment was the main concern of 32 percent of the respondents. “However, during the campaign, possibly on account of the promises of employment resonated with voters, this proportion was reduced to 27 percent in the post-poll survey,” the newspaper said.
Decreasing income and the government’s way of dealing with corruption and scams were other issues worrying voters, according to the survey. A total of 21 percent of the respondents said they chose the BJP for its efforts in developing the country while 20 percent did so for Modi’s leadership, which doubled from the 10 percent in the pre-poll survey. Construction of a grand Hindu temple in the town of Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh state in January, cited several times by Modi and the BJP as a landmark event, was the most liked work of the government, according to the survey.
Despite that, the party was unable to win the Faizabad seat where Ayodhya is located. It also performed poorly in other parts of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state which sends 80 lawmakers to parliament. The BJP’s share of seats there slipped to 33 from 62 at the last election.
Meanwhile, India’s opposition Congress leader Rahul Gandhi demanded a parliamentary investigation on Thursday into sharp stock market moves before and after the exit polls following the country’s general election that concluded last week. Modi’s alliance won the vote with a surprisingly slim majority, well below the landslide forecast by the weekend exit polls.
Projections made by Saturday’s exit polls sent stock markets surging on Monday, with the NSE Nifty 50 and S&P BSE Sensex jumping 3.3 percent and 3.4 percent respectively, a day before the Election Commission counted votes and declared results.
Modi and some of his ministers had said during campaigning that the markets would surge when results were declared on June 4, with Home Minister Amit Shah saying in a television interview, “buy before June 4, they will shoot up”.
Stock markets, however, crashed to a four-year low on Tuesday - down nearly 6 percent - after election results showed Modi’s BJP lost its outright majority and the BJP-led NDA won a narrow majority to give Modi a third term.
“We are interested in having a JPC to investigate the role of the prime minister, home minister, BJP members,” Congress leader Rahul Gandhi told reporters, referring to comments made by them during the campaign and a Joint Parliamentary Committee probe. “We want to understand who are the foreign investors who did these trades?” he said. Markets regulator the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.
A source familiar with the developments said SEBI was examining share trade patterns ahead of the exit polls and general election results for any suspicious transactions. Modi’s office, an aide of Shah and a BJP spokesperson did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment. — Reuters.
