Can’t get past the paywall but I hope India will see a better future with a leader who cares for all its people.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Although votes were still being counted as of Tuesday afternoon and the Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party could still form the government, its performance was projected to fall short of its showing in 2014, when Modi swept to power on a wave of national anger over corruption, or 2019, when he was buoyed by nationalist sentiment over a border clash with Pakistan.

Yet the mood shifted dramatically as early vote counts trickled in Tuesday morning and indicated that the BJP might not single-handedly secure the 272 seats needed in the 543-member Lok Sabha lower house, as it comfortably managed in 2014 and 2019.

“The entire party structure is built around advertising around him, but the challenge this time was that they weren’t able to come up with a set of issues that they could tie around Modi,” said Nilanjan Sircar, a political scientist at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi.

He repeatedly warned lower-caste Hindus at rallies that only he could stop the rival Congress party from scrapping India’s affirmative action programs or snatching their livestock and wedding jewelry and redistributing them to Muslims.

The Congress and Samajwadi opposition parties were set to capture more than half of the seats in Uttar Pradesh, the same state where Modi had consecrated a grand Hindu temple with fanfare in February, early results showed.

Modi had also signaled that if given a strong mandate for a third term, he could push forward with contentious labor reforms that would make hiring and firing workers easier, help local business owners and invite foreign investment.

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