After ten years of governing with an outright majority, Modi’s government faced a different arithmetic in 2024. This article covers how that shift happened, what it meant practically, and who the key coalition partners were.
The Results
In the 2024 general election, the BJP won 240 of 543 Lok Sabha seats, its single-party seat count falling well short of the 272 needed for a majority on its own, and down sharply from 303 in 2019. The wider NDA coalition, however, crossed that threshold comfortably, winning 293 seats in total, enough to form the government with Modi as its leader. The opposition INDIA bloc, an alliance formed specifically to contest this election, won 232 seats, with the Congress party’s own tally rising to 99 seats, its strongest showing in over a decade, though still well short of government-forming numbers.
Why the BJP’s Own Numbers Fell
Analysts pointed to several factors behind the drop in BJP’s standalone seat count, including underperformance in populous states like Uttar Pradesh, where the party had swept previous elections, along with anti-incumbency sentiment after a decade in power and a more consolidated opposition strategy in several key states compared to 2019. The result marked the first time since 2014 that BJP needed coalition partners to reach a majority, ending a decade in which it had governed without depending on allies for its parliamentary numbers.
The Key Coalition Partners
Two regional parties emerged as decisive to the government’s formation. The Telugu Desam Party (TDP), led by Andhra Pradesh’s N. Chandrababu Naidu, and the Janata Dal (United), led by Bihar’s Nitish Kumar, together held enough seats to be described by multiple news outlets at the time as “kingmakers,” since their support was necessary for the NDA to comfortably clear the majority mark. Other allies, including Chirag Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party faction and the Shiv Sena faction led by Eknath Shinde, also contributed seats to the coalition total.
Forming the Government
Following the results, NDA constituent parties formally met and elected Modi as the alliance’s leader, and he was sworn in for a third consecutive term as Prime Minister on June 9, 2024, becoming the first non-Congress Indian Prime Minister to secure three consecutive terms. Cabinet formation involved allocating positions among coalition partners, a negotiation that news coverage at the time described as more involved than in the previous two terms, given that key allies now held genuine leverage over the government’s ability to pass legislation, a dynamic that hadn’t applied when BJP held an outright majority on its own.
What Governing as a Coalition Changes
A coalition government structurally differs from a single-party majority government in ways that go beyond cabinet seat allocation. Contested or high-friction legislation generally requires more active negotiation with allies who have their own regional political interests to protect, and allies retain some ability to extract concessions, whether policy commitments or funding for their home states, in exchange for their continued support. Several commentators noted this as a meaningful shift in how the third Modi government would likely need to operate compared to the more unilateral legislative pace of the first two terms.
Early Signs of the Coalition Dynamic in Practice
Within months of the government’s formation, some of this dynamic became visible in practice, with several proposed policy moves reportedly adjusted or paused after concerns raised by coalition allies, a pattern of negotiation that had been largely absent during the previous decade of single-party majority government. Budget allocations for Andhra Pradesh and Bihar, the home states of the TDP and JD(U) respectively, also drew specific attention in post-election financial planning, with opposition parties characterising the allocations as concessions tied directly to those parties’ continued coalition support, a characterisation the government did not fully accept, framing the same allocations instead as part of ordinary developmental planning for those states.
A Familiar Pattern for India, if Not for Modi
It’s worth noting that coalition government itself is not new to Indian politics; it was, in fact, the norm for roughly two decades before 2014, spanning multiple prime ministers and party combinations. What changed in 2024 was that this particular Prime Minister, whose first two terms were defined partly by not needing that kind of negotiation, now had to operate within it, a genuinely new experience for his own tenure specifically, even if coalition governance itself has deep precedent in India’s broader political history.
Bottom Line
The 2024 election gave Modi a third consecutive term, an achievement no non-Congress Prime Minister had managed before, but it came through a coalition rather than an outright majority, restoring a dynamic of allied-party leverage that Indian politics had largely moved away from during his first two terms in office.
Disclaimer: This article is based on publicly available election records and news reports listed below. It is written for general informational purposes and does not represent an official statement from the Government of India or the Election Commission of India.
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