Winning Bizness Desk

Mumbai. Not only the more that 140 crore people of India have expressed their reactions to the defeat of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who have miserably failed to return in power with a thumping majority, as claimed in his election campaigns, but the international media have also spoken out. It has said that the "aura of invincibility" around Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been "shattered" by the Indian voters who gave the Opposition a new lease on life. According to the results for all Lok Sabha constituencies, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won 240 of the 543 seats and the Congress 99. The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance has comfortably crossed the majority mark of 272 in the 543-member Lok Sabha though the BJP lost its outright majority.

The international media have minced no words to praise Indian voters and almost all big dailied have expressed their opinion. The New York Times started its report by noting, "Suddenly, the aura of invincibility around Narendra Modi has been shattered." Terming the results as "unexpectedly sobering," it noted that they were a "sharp reversal a decade into Mr Modi's transformational tenure. There was "tepid support for his Hindu nationalist party, piercing the air of invincibility around the most dominant Indian politician in decades, it said."

Notably, for the past decade, India has been "synonymous internationally with its prime minister, Narendra Modi. But on june 4th, as final election results poured in, the electorate appeared to show dissatisfaction with the status quo and placed the serial winner onto shaky ground," The Washington Post wrote.

World's oldest media organisation, BBC said, The verdict marks a surprising revival for the Congress Party-led INDIA Opposition alliance, defying earlier predictions of its decline, and sharply diverging from both exit polls and pre-election surveys. The election results show that Brand Modi has lost some of its shine, indicating that even Modi is susceptible to anti-incumbency. In other words, he is not as invincible as many of his supporters believed. This offers renewed hope to the Opposition, it said.

Another big media house CNN said, "Going into this election, Modi had set a goal of winning 400 seats in the lower house of parliament, or Lok Sabha. But as results began to trickle in Tuesday night, it quickly became clear his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party wouldn't even have enough to form a simple majority. Instead, for the first time since coming to power a decade ago, Modi will be reliant on longstanding local coalition partners to keep him in government." It also said that Tuesday's result is a humbling moment for a leader whose lead in the polls was lauded by supporters as unassailable.

Time magazine quoted Milan Vaishnav, the Director of the South Asia Program at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, as saying, "This election is undoubtedly a rebuke for Modi and the BJP. After ten years in power, it was in many ways a referendum on its track record in office and there are clearly many Indians who are feeling restless and uneasy. Modi now faces a more powerful Opposition than at any point over the past decade," it said.