‘India wins yet again’: Narendra Modi declares election victory

Prime Minister Narendra Modi retains a strong majority in India’s parliament, an official vote tally shows. His party delivered a “massive victory” against chief opponent Rahul Gandhi in the general election.

Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies are projected to win 337 of the contested 542 seats in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of India’s parliament, according to NDTV. This is well above the 272 seats required to secure a majority in the chamber. Modi has already declared victory.

The results were celebrated by Modi’s cabinet members, with Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj congratulating the PM for scoring “a massive victory.” Minister of Commerce and Industry and Civil Aviation, Suresh Prabhu, called BJP’s lead “nothing short of a landslide, a political tsunami sweeping entire country.”

The chief opposition party, the Indian National Congress (INC), meanwhile, is expected to grab 96 seats. Its leader Rahul Gandhi had earlier called on his followers “not to be dismayed by the deceptive propaganda of fake exit polls.”

Modi, 68, who led India since 2014, built his campaign around promises of strong leadership and a personal rags-to-riches life story, having come from a disadvantaged community.

This image contrasted with the one of his main opponent, Gandhi, 48, whose family is among the political elite. Rahul Gandhi’s father and grandmother both served as prime minister, while his mother was a longtime party leader.

The dynasty politics “doesn’t appeal to the younger people in the country anymore,” Ajit Kumar Jha, research editor at India Today, told RT.

Modi comes from a very poor section of society. He comes from a caste called Other Backward Class, or the OBC. There is a lot of appeal for people coming from the very bottom and rising.

The INC, meanwhile, is associated with the dynastic approach, something the part had “overplayed for the last 70 years,” Jha said.

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