Mumbai June 4 2024: India’s stocks market plummeted, erasing $386 billion in market value, as tallies signaled that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party was struggling to win a majority of seats in national elections, a stunning result after exit polls showed he was on pace for a landslide victory.
A Modi victory had been expected to be positive for the country’s financial markets, according to analysts, on the hope India will undertake further economic reform.
But the reduced prospect of Modi’s alliance winning an overwhelming majority rattled investors.
The NSE Nifty 50 index closed down 5.93% at 21,884.5 points, and the S&P BSE Sensex fell 5.74% to 72,079.05. The indexes fell as much as 8.5% earlier in the day, after hitting record highs on Monday.
At the day’s low, the indexes saw their biggest intraday fall since March 2020, when stocks were battered by the first lockdown during the COVID pandemic.
The BJP-led NDA is moving towards a third term, but with far less numbers than what the exit polls had predicted for the ruling alliance. The ruling NDA, which had made “abki baar, 400-paar” its poll pitch, is way short of the target and is hovering around the 300-mark, according to Times of India.
