Before the big day on June 4, all speculations were centred upon how big will BJP-led NDA’s victory margin be. But as the counting process unfolded, India was in for a shocker of sorts — in the first two hours, the INDIA bloc didn’t trail nowhere as badly as expected, running almost neck-to-neck with the NDA.
Stock markets seem to have taken note of the unfolding big event with a sense of foreboding. At around 10 am, benchmark index Sensex was trading more than 1,600 points down, after opening sharply lower in line with pre-market trends.
With investors likely taking a risk-averse stance, Sensex opened over 1,600 points lower today, dragged by heavyweights, leaving investors licking their wounds after losing Rs 9 lakh crore in just 15 minutes.
In a survey run by ET Online a few days before the 2024 Lok Sabha election results, more than 70% of the total participants (numbering over 10,000) had said that a BJP defeat in these elections would be back for the Indian stock markets. A far smaller number — less than 14% respondents — had said that election results won’t impact markets.
On June 3, the first day of trading following the exit polls most of which gave the ruling BJP-led NDA a thumping majority in the 2024 elections, Sensex had closed with a sizeable gain of more than 2,500 points, with the so-called Modi stocks driving the day’s market rally. Indian markets ended the day at new lifetime highs, driven by investor expectation of sustained growth on a Modi win.Meanwhile, in the first two hours of counting, the trends appear not as certain as the nation and the ruling dispensation were expecting them to be. It has turned out to be seesaw kind of battle today, as INDIA bloc comes up with an unexpected challenge to Modi’s might.
At the time of writing this, reports are trickling in of many BJP bigwigs trailing their rivals, including some big union ministers in major states like UP that were hitherto being considered as foregone conclusion in the saffron party’s favour.
