Sweeping BJP win gives Congress ‘slap in the face’

Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister in waiting, met senior members of his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party on Sunday to discuss cabinet appointments and plans to revive the economy after an overwhelming victory in the general election.

So comprehensive was the defeat of the Congress party after 10 years in power that Mr Modi joked that its leaders would need to find allies to form a coherent opposition in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament.

“Normally, coalitions are forged to form a government,” he said in Varanasi, the holy Hindu city where he stood as a candidate, and where he went on Saturday night to pray and give thanks at the River Ganges. “But now, a coalition is being put together to form an opposition. The people of the country have given them a slap in the face.”

Mr Modi is set to be sworn in as prime minister in the middle of next week, with high-level ministerial appointments also expected in the coming days, including for the post of finance minister.  

The BJP took 282 of the 543 seats in the lower house, while Congress secured only 44 nationwide, barely more than the 37 won by the AIADMK party led by Jayalalithaa, chief minister of the southern state of Tamil Nadu. 

Nandan Nilekani, billionaire co-founder of IT giant Infosys, contested a seat in Bangalore for Congress but lost to his BJP rival.

Other parties, including the new anti-corruption Aam Aadmi or Common Man Party and those of the far left, also did badly, while Mayawati, a once-popular regional leader who championed Dalits (the former “untouchables”), did not win a single seat.

Further reverberations from Mr Modi’s landslide election victory came on Sunday, with the resignation of Nitish Kumar, the business-friendly chief minister of the northern state of Bihar, following his party's heavy defeat by the BJP.

The 81-year-old Manmohan Singh, prime minister for the past decade, also resigned on Saturday, amid a mixture of praise for his gentlemanly behaviour and criticism of the corruption and indecision that marred the final years of his term in office.

Mr Singh said he was confident that India would emerge as a “major powerhouse” of the global economy, but the election results suggested that the more than 500m Indians who voted thought Mr Modi would do a better job of economic management.

“Definitely you’ll see more agility in the government,” said one of Mr Modi’s advisers, referring to the dozens of power and transport projects that had stalled under Congress, to the exasperation of investors.

“On infrastructure, a tangible big-ticket item, there will be movement. Power will get better,” he said. “Roads will get fast-tracked. Ports, airports and all those things will get better.”

With Mr Modi in command of the world’s largest democracy, the US moved quickly to dispel questions about whether he would be granted a visa – denied him since 2005 because of accusations about his role in anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat three years earlier.

President Barack Obama called Mr Modi to congratulate him. The White House said Mr Obama wanted to “fulfil the extraordinary promise of the US-India strategic partnership, and they agreed to continue expanding and deepening the wide-ranging co-operation between our two democracies”.