June 5 (Punjab Khabarnama) : The Congress-led opposition INDIA bloc held a meeting to chart its next course of action, with the grand old party winning 99 seats, as per the ECI, in what its best performance since 2009. The meeting will be held at Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge’s residence in Delhi.
The opposition alliance, which surprised everyone with its strong show, has a current tally of 234 seats, and may contact both Nitish and Naidu to switch over and deny a third straight term to the BJP and NDA.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday submitted his resignation, along with his Union Ministers’, to President Droupadi Murmu. Rashtrapati Bhawan said, “The President accepted the resignation and requested the Prime Minister and the Union Council of Ministers to continue in office till the new Government is formed.”
Meanwhile, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) chief Chandrababu Naidu arrived in Delhi on Wednesday for a meeting of the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA), a day after votes were counted for the recently held Lok Sabha elections. Tipped to win well over 300 seats by almost all exit polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the largest NDA constituent, and which had set a target of 370 Lok Sabha seats on its own and more than 400 with its allies, fell way short of the mark.
The meeting began around 4:15pm on Wednesday and ended around 5:30pm.
The BJP, which was seeking a third consecutive term in office and a third straight single-party majority, won 240 seats, according to the Election Commission of India (ECI). NDA’s overall tally, on the other hand, stood at 292.
PM Narendra Modi is likely to achieve a hattrick of terms in the top post.
While Kumar is infamous for repeatedly changing sides, Naidu, whose TDP won the simultaneous Andhra Pradesh polls, walked out of the NDA in 2018 before again joining hands with the BJP ahead of the recent Lok Sabha elections.