NEW DELHI — India’s 47-day marathon election did not give Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party the landslide majority that it had hoped for, forcing it to turn to its allied parties to ensure a victory.
As of 6:30 p.m., the party was leading in 241 seats, far below the 272 needed to govern.
If Modi manages to gather his allies to piece together a majority, it will be his third term after a decade in power. While still a feat, the party’s numbers were nothing close to its spectacular performance in 2019, when it was very clear early on in the counting process that it had 303 of the 543 seats.
The party had hoped to surpass its previous tally by maintaining its stronghold in the north and making new inroads in the east and south, but the results on Tuesday showed declines in some of its traditional bastions even as it managed to gain new territory in some parts of the country.
Out of the almost 1 billion people, from the Himalayas in the north to far flung islands in the Indian Ocean, registered to vote, roughly 600 million cast a ballot.
As election officials trekked for miles, by foot, hoof and helicopter, to collect the votes of the most remote citizens, India’s top diplomat, S. Jaishankar, called it the “largest electoral logistics exercise that this planet has ever witnessed.”