MODI HOLDS STEADY, RAHUL EMERGES

The 2024 general election results were no aberration, as our MOTN poll reflects a desire for continuity of Narendra Modi's rule but with caveats, even as Rahul consolidates his gains

- RAJ CHENGAPPA

Only three Indian prime ministers have scaled Mount 3.0-the rarefied pinnacle of a third term in office. The former two, Jawaharlal Nehru and his daughter Indira Gandhi, encountered major turbulence during their third stints and failed to complete their full terms. Nehru erred seriously at the start of his third term when the Indian armed forces suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of China in the 1962 border war. His persona and credibility considerably diminished, Nehru died of a heart attack in 1964, three years before his term was to end.

Unlike him, Indira did not win a third consecutive term; she was defeated in the 1977 general election after completing two terms, the second term blackened by her imposition of the Emergency in 1975. However, she stormed back to power in 1980 after the failure of the Janata Party experiment but soon ran into severe headwinds while dealing with militancy in Punjab. She launched Operation Blue Star in June 1984, which flushed out the militants holed up in the Golden Temple in Amritsar and eliminated its leader, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. But she paid for it with her life when she was assassinated by her own Sikh guards four months later.