Narendra Modi will be sworn in for his third term as Indian prime minister this weekend, but how long he remains in office could be decided by two regional politicians suddenly thrust into the national spotlight by this week’s shock general election result.
The support of N Chandrababu Naidu, chief minister-elect of the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, and Nitish Kumar, chief minister of Bihar in the north, is likely to be vital to Modi after his Bharatiya Janata party lost its outright majority in India’s lower house of parliament.
Naidu and Kumar lead the largest parties after the BJP in Modi’s National Democratic Alliance, which the prime minister now needs to stay in power, and Indian commentators are already calling them “kingmakers”.
“It’s a game-changer,” said N Ram, a director of the group that publishes The Hindu newspaper, of the election result. “With the BJP short of reaching a single-party majority, it means that Modi is now crucially dependent on these two.”
The BJP won 240 seats, well below the 272 needed to control the lower house. Altogether, the NDA secured 293 seats, but if Naidu, whose Telugu Desam party took 16 seats, and Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) which has 12, were to both jump ship, the alliance’s majority would be lost.
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It makes for a transformed political scene in which Modi, who previously ruled almost unchallenged, will be subject to the vagaries and risks of coalition politics.
Analysts describe Kumar, who has switched sides between India’s two main political camps before, as a wily political operator. In 2023 he was one of the founders of the opposition INDIA alliance, but pulled out and joined Modi’s NDA earlier this year.
As chief minister of one of India’s poorest states, he held a caste census — a concession to the more than half of Indians from lower caste or tribal backgrounds that he has said could be a model for the nation.
The INDIA alliance made conducting such a census part of its election campaign, but Modi denounced the idea as part of a “hidden agenda” to divide Hindus and give their wealth and benefits to Muslims.
Now Indian media are speculating that INDIA might seek to lure Kumar back into its fold.
Naidu, who has also switched political allegiances in the past, is a business-friendly politician credited with helping to turn the southern city of Hyderabad into a tech hub in the 1990s. He has previously criticised the prime minister, telling an interviewer in 2019 that “all leaders are better than Narendra Modi”.
“If Naidu were to pull out for some reason, then the government would be close to collapse,” said Ashutosh Varshney, professor of international studies at Brown University. “But it won’t happen quickly.”
On Wednesday both Naidu and Kumar lined up behind Modi, joining an official NDA declaration of support for the new government and posing for a group photo with their fingers raised in a victory salute.
In an indication of the new power dynamic in New Delhi, Naidu flanked the prime minister on his left with Kumar the next along. Readers of India’s political tea leaves quickly noted that powerful home affairs minister Amit Shah stood three spots away from Modi, with many speculating that he could lose his portfolio.
Unlike many other democracies where coalition agreements can take weeks or even months to clinch, India has a tradition of forming governments quickly, appointing ministers only after the swearing in. Analysts say this is to reduce the risk of politicians being lured to switch sides, a practice known in India as “horse-trading”.
India’s colourful, volatile and sometimes vicious regional politics rarely draw international attention, but after this week’s shock election result banks, brokerages and consultancies have rushed to advise clients on the nitty gritty of Modi’s coalition.
Radhika Rao, senior economist at Singapore’s DBS Bank, wrote in a note on Wednesday that Naidu and Kumar’s parties would “hold considerable sway in the upcoming alliance discussions”.
Indian media have traded speculation about which ministries and parliamentary posts their parties might claim.
Vijay Kumar Neelayapalem, a spokesman for Telugu Desam, said it was “up to the prime minister” how many ministerial slots each party got. A spokesperson for Janata Dal did not respond to requests for comment.
The order in which members of Modi’s new cabinet are sworn in on Saturday may offer hints of who is in line for senior roles. Analysts said the new power of the BJP’s junior partners would be likely to not only change Modi’s cabinet, but his style of governing too.
“Naidu and Nitish [Kumar] are going to demand a lot,” said Ram of The Hindu. “I think you will see a reinvented Modi.”
Additional reporting by Chris Kay in Mumbai
