2024: A year of challenges for incumbents and traditional political parties

Apart from Assembly polls in Delhi and Bihar, 2025 could also see the long pending election to the country’s wealthiest civic body, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation.

 

Last year had elections to 84 Rajya Sabha’s seats, which is a little more than a third of its total 245 members, and the results helped the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) inch closer to the halfway mark in the Upper House.

 

However, the NDA’s numbers in Parliament, in either of its two Houses, are insufficient to ensure the passage of two key Bills currently under the scrutiny of separate parliamentary joint committees — the Waqf Amendment Bill and the 129th Constitution Amendment Bill, which envisages conducting simultaneous polls to the Lok Sabha and legislative assemblies.

 

The two committees are expected to turn in their reports over the course of the year, and in neither case can the government push through the proposed original Bill without relenting on some of the changes that the Oppos­ition has demanded. The Rajya Sabha will see eight vacancies over the course of the year, two from Assam and six from Tamil Nadu, which would not be enough to change the numbers in the BJP’s favour.

 

The year will see the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), founded on the Vijayadashami day in 1925, and Communist Party of India (CPI), founded the same year in December, celebrate their respective centenaries.

 

The BJP will elect its national president, Uttarakhand will roll out its Uniform Civil Code, India will host the Quad summit and the country could see its decennial Census being conducted after a delay of four years. The 55-day Mahakumbh in Prayagraj in January-February is expected to be the largest religious gathering in the world.  

 

Internationally, 2025 will be far less frenetic than 2024, which saw more than 60 countries, including India, hold their national electio­ns. Elections are due in a dozen co­u­n­tries, and South Bloc will kee­­nly track the results of at least two — Canada and Bangladesh. Ger­many, Chile, Belarus, and the Philippines are some other countries due for their national elections.

 

According to Pew Research, 2024 turned out to be a difficult year for incumbents and traditional political parties. Its survey across 34 countries found a median of 64 per cent of adults said their national economy was in bad shape. In several nations that held elections in 2024 — including France, Japan, South Africa, South Korea, and the UK — more than seven-in-10 expressed this view. Rattled by rising prices, divided over cultural issues, and angry at the political status quo, voters in many countries sent a message of frustration, the think tank said. 

 

It pointed to the election results in the US, but also in the UK, where the Labour Party won an overwhelming parliamentary majority, bringing 14 years of Conservative Party rule to an end. In Botswana, the Botswana Democratic Party lost power for the first time in nearly 60 years. Opposition parties won power in Ghana, Panama, Portu­gal, and Uruguay.

 

Elsewhere, incumbents retur­ned but failed to win a majority. In South Africa, the African National Congress failed to win a majority of National Assembly seats for the first time since the end of apartheid. The BJP in India and Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party, which has governed the country for most of the post-World War II era, and its coalition partner, Komeito, lost their majority in Parliament. In France, President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to hold early elections backfired.

 

In Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina's Awami League won the polls in January 2024 after a crackdown on the opposition. By August, Hasina fled her country after violent protests. Fresh elections are likely later this year.