Narendra Modi has won a landslide re-election victory that gives him unchallenged power to forge ahead with his efforts to build a “New India”, based on a stronger economy and greater stature on the global stage.
The prime minister’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party secured its second consecutive single-party parliamentary majority, avoiding dependence on coalition partners that could have acted as brakes on either bold economic reforms, or moves to reshape India as an openly majoritarian Hindu state.
A tea-seller’s son who eschewed family life to join India’s rightwing political movement, Mr Modi has now amassed political strength not commanded by any Indian politician since Jawaharlal Nehru, the first post-independence prime minister, or his daughter, Indira Gandhi, who also served as premier.