New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will take oath of office for the third successive time on Saturday, becoming the first leader of the country to do so since Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister.
Modi met President Droupadi Murmu at Rashtrapati Bhavan in Delhi to submit his resignation, and that of his cabinet. He was then requested to continue in his role till the swearing-in.
The Cabinet, in its meeting today, advised the President to dissolve the 17th Lok Sabha with immediate effect. The President accepted the advice of the Cabinet and signed the order dissolving the 17th Lok Sabha.
PM Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party – which won 282 seats in 2014 and 303 in the 2019 election — has won 240 seats in the 2024 elections – 32 short of the 272-majority mark.
The BJP will now rely on the 53 seats won by members of the party-led National Democratic Alliance for the third term.
Once it became clear that the BJP-led NDA was to form government and had stacked up the numbers, congratulatory messages started pouring in from world leaders.
UK PM Rishi Sunak called up PM Narendra Modi to congratulate him.
“Today I spoke to @narendramodi to congratulate him on his election victory. The UK and India share the closest of friendships, and together that friendship will continue to thrive,” Sunak said on X.
Russian President Vladimir Putin too called up PM Modi to congratulate him.
“The voting results again confirm your personal high political authority, support for your course towards accelerated socio-economic development of India and protection of its interests on the world stage,” Putin said in a statement.
US President Joe Biden called up PM Modi to congratulate him and also wrote on X:
“Congratulations to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the National Democratic Alliance on their victory, and the nearly 650 million voters in this historic election. The friendship between our nations is only growing as we unlock a shared future of unlimited potential.”
Messages of congratulations poured in from many other nations including Israel, the UAE, France, the UK, the EU, Netherlands, Malaysia, and closer home Bangladesh, Nepal, the Maldives and Sri Lanka.
Meanwhile, the opposition INDIA bloc leaders said that the BJP’s not-so-good showing is proof that the “mandate is decisively against PM Modi”.
At the INDIA alliance leaders’ meeting, Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge said, “We fought well, fought unitedly, fought resolutely…The mandate is decisively against PM Modi, against him and the substance and style of his politics. It is a huge political loss for him personally apart from being a clear moral defeat as well. However, he is determined to subvert the will of the people.”
