India’s month-long election has ended, with tens of millions of Indians casting ballots in a vote widely expected to usher in a shaky coalition government. While results are not being announced until tomorrow, Indian media polls indicate the Congress party-led ruling coalition could be narrowly ahead of the opposition Hindu-nationalist alliance.
But with the existing alliances deeply fragile, and both main parties set to launch their final quests for allies once the results are officially announced, little in the political scene is clear.
“We can only be certain about the uncertainty of it,” said Amitabh Mattoo, a political analyst. “You will naturally have a coalition.”
PHOTO: REUTERS
But the final form of that coalition was impossible to predict.
The Constitution states that a new parliament has to be in place by June 2.
Wednesday’s polling was the fifth and final phase of the elections in the nation of nearly 1.2 billion people, where voting is staggered for logistical and security reasons. The month-long election has seen sporadic violence, especially in the Himalayan state of Jammu-Kashmir, where separatists called for a boycott of the polls.
The scale of the election is staggering, with 714 million voters eligible to cast their ballots at more than 828,000 polling stations scattered from the slopes of the Himalayas to the tropical southern coast.
But there was little to link those voters together. There were no resonant, central issues in the campaign, much of which was dominated by vague promises of prosperity. With neither of the two main parties expected to win an outright majority, many seats will go to a range of regional and caste-based parties. Their campaigns revolve around a vast range of issues — from farmers’ demands for cheap electricity to offers of free TVs for the poor.
Overall turnout was approximately 59 percent to 60 percent, the national election commission announced on Wednesday, up slightly from 58 percent in the last national vote in 2004.
Media reports said the coalition led by the Congress, the left-of-center party that for years held an iron grip on Indian politics and which has long been dominated by the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty, held a slim lead over the opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies.
Hungarian authorities temporarily detained seven Ukrainian citizens and seized two armored cars carrying tens of millions of euros in cash across Hungary on suspicion of money laundering, officials said on Friday. The Ukrainians were released on Friday, following their detention on Thursday, but Hungarian officials held onto the cash, prompting Ukraine to accuse Hungary’s Russia-friendly government of illegally seizing the money. “We will not tolerate this state banditism,” Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said. The seven detained Ukrainians were employees of the Ukrainian state-owned Oschadbank, who were traveling in the two armored cars that were carrying the money between Austria and
Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani on Friday after dissolving the Kosovar parliament said a snap election should be held as soon as possible to avoid another prolonged political crisis in the Balkan country at a time of global turmoil. Osmani said it is important for Kosovo to wrap up the upcoming election process and form functional institutions for political stability as the war rages in the Middle East. “Precisely because the geopolitical situation is that complex, it is important to finish this electoral process which is coming up,” she said. “It is very hard now to imagine what will happen next.” Kosovo, which declared
MORE BANS: Australia last year required sites to remove accounts held by under-16s, with a few countries pushing for similar action at an EU level and India considering its own ban Indonesia on Friday said it would ban social media access for children under 16, citing threats from online pornography, cyberbullying, online fraud and Internet addiction. “Accounts belonging to children under 16 on high-risk platforms will start to be deactivated, beginning with YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, Bigo Live and Roblox,” Indonesian Minister of Communications and Digital Meutya Hafid said. “The government is stepping in so that parents no longer have to fight alone against the giants of the algorithm. Implementation will begin on March 28, 2026,” she said. The social media ban would be introduced in stages “until all platforms fulfill their
Counting was under way in Nepal yesterday, after a high-stakes parliamentary election to reshape the country’s leadership following protests last year that toppled the government. Key figures vying for power include former Nepalese prime minister K. P. Sharma Oli, rapper-turned-mayor Balendra Shah, who is bidding for the youth vote, and newly elected Nepali Congress party leader Gagan Thapa. In Kathmandu’s tea shops and city squares, people were glued to their phones, checking results as early trends flashed up — suggesting Shah’s centrist Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) was ahead. Nepalese Election Commission spokesman Prakash Nyupane said the counting was ongoing “in a peaceful manner”
RSS