Narendra Modi was sworn in for a third term as India’s prime minister on Sunday, becoming the country’s second prime minister to win a third five-year term.
According to the Associated Press, Prime Minister Modi, along with his cabinet members, took the oath of office at the Rashtrapati Bhavan, the presidential residence in New Delhi, India, presided over by President Draupadi Murmu.
Opinion polls had overwhelmingly predicted a landslide victory for Modi, but India’s opposition parties have defied expectations, posing a serious risk to his ability to secure a majority. Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, which won in 2014 and 2015, won 240 seats but fell short of the 272 needed for a parliamentary majority.
Modi’s rival, the Indian Alliance, doubled its tally from the last election to 232 seats, according to the Associated Press.
India’s opposition leaders celebrated the election results as a victory for democracy in the country.
“The main thing this election has shown is that the country has clearly and unanimously said: we don’t want Narendra Modi and Amit Shah running the country,” Rahul Gandhi, scion of India’s powerful Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty, said at a party press conference last week.
Shah is Modi’s home minister and a close aide.
“We don’t like the way they are running the country. We don’t appreciate the way they are attacking the Constitution. This is a big message to Narendra Modi,” Gandhi added.
Biden last week congratulated Prime Minister Modi and his National Democratic Alliance coalition on their victory.
“I congratulate Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the National Democratic Alliance on their victory, and to the nearly 650 million voters who cast their ballots in this historic election,” Biden said in a message on social platform X.
“The friendship between our two nations will only deepen as we forge a shared future full of boundless possibilities,” Biden added.
Modi, 73, confirmed that he had received a call from Biden and said he was “happy to receive the call.” [a] “I just got a call from my friend, President Joe Biden.”
“I deeply appreciate his kind words of congratulations and his appreciation for Indian democracy,” PM Modi said.I said it with X.
While the elections were a shock, they are unlikely to bring any major changes to India-US relations, experts said.
