Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif felicitated on Monday Narendra Modi on taking oath as the Prime Minister of India.
PM Sharif in a post on social media site X wrote: “Felicitations to @narendramodi on taking oath as the Prime Minister of India.”
On Sunday, PM Modi was sworn in for his third consecutive term, a historic moment as he becomes the first leader since former premier Jawaharlal Nehru to achieve this feat after completing full terms in office.
Alongside Modi, several of his ministers, including Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, and JP Nadda, also took their oaths.
Following a six-week-long election and the tallying of all 640 million votes cast, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), along with its National Democratic Alliance (NDA), secured a majority, albeit with a notable decrease in seat numbers compared to the 2019 elections.
The incumbent Prime Minister’s BJP won 240 seats, falling short of the 272-mark required for an outright majority in the Lok Sabha, India’s lower house of parliament, which has a total of 543 seats. However, with support from its allies, the BJP managed to secure 293 seats overall.
In contrast, the opposition INDIA alliance, led by Rahul Gandhi’s Indian National Congress (INC) party, obtained 232 seats, with the Congress alone winning 99 seats, a significant increase from their 2019 performance when they secured only 52 seats.
Together with their allies, the INC won in 91 constituencies.
These election results sharply differ from those of 2019, where the BJP-led NDA secured 353 seats, with the BJP alone winning 303 of them.
In a similar exchange of greetings among both nations, Modi following the February 8 general elections in Pakistan congratulated Shehbaz Sharif on assuming the charge of prime minister but his brief post on X apparently carried a ‘quiet’ message for Pakistan.
“Congratulations to @CMShehbaz on being sworn in as the Prime Minister of Pakistan,” Modi wrote on X.
Shehbaz thanked his Indian counterpart for congratulating him on his election victory as the foreign office said Pakistan always wanted ‘good relations’ with all its neighbours including India.
Sources told The Express Tribune that PM Shehbaz was advised to respond the same way as Modi greeted him. That was the reason that Shehbaz’s message was also terse. “Thank you @narendaramodi for felicitations on my election as the Prime Minister of Pakistan,” he wrote on X.
