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Will Regional Parties Stop the Modi Juggernaut?

The battle for India is being fought in the states as the 2024 Lok Sabha elections turns local. Will regional parties stop the Modi juggernaut?

By Satish K Jha, 360info
New Update
Regional parties

Will regional parties stop the Modi juggernaut? | India's general election has become a highly localised affair — varying from state to state, as well as within a state at the constituency level. | Lakshmi Patel/In Old News via Flickr

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Will regional parties stop the Modi juggernaut?

India's parliamentary election is no longer the one-horse race many had initially imagined.

The National Democratic Alliance, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is being challenged by the Indian National Democratic and Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), a grouping of opposition parties. 

The 2024 general election has turned into a highly localised affair. This helps Modi’s adversaries. 

It seems regional parties will play a decisive role in the contests taking place in various states. If the Modi juggernaut is halted, the regional parties are likely to have the last laugh.

Modi’s electoral applecart is being upset in five ways:

1. Regional Parties have Regained their Mojo

The regional parties are rejuvenated after a decade of hibernation and are putting up a good fight in their zones of influence. In the last two general elections of 2014 and 2019, they could not stop the Modi-led BJP. But this time around, they have regained their mojo.

Regional parties in India have a chequered history. 

India being a federal polity, some parties rose on the plank of regional deprivation and sub-nationalism laced with caste and ethnic considerations.

However, many others were products of the socialist movement of the 1950s and 1960s. They got a new lease of life after the implementation of the Mandal Commission recommendations for reservations in government jobs for the socially and economic

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