The "aura of invincibility" around Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been "shattered" by the Indian voters who gave the Opposition a new lease on life, this is how the international media described the outcome of India's general elections.
According to the results for all Lok Sabha constituencies, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won 240 of the 543 seats and the Congress 99. The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance has comfortably crossed the majority mark of 272 in the 543-member Lok Sabha though the BJP lost its outright majority.
News Organizations On PM Modi
The New York Times started its report by noting, "Suddenly, the aura of invincibility around Narendra Modi has been shattered."
Terming the results as "unexpectedly sobering," it noted that they were a "sharp reversal a decade into Mr Modi's transformational tenure."
For the past decade, India has been "synonymous internationally with its prime minister, Narendra Modi. But on Tuesday, as final election results poured in, the electorate appeared to show dissatisfaction with the status quo and placed the serial winner onto shaky ground," The Washington Post wrote.
There was "tepid support for his Hindu nationalist party, piercing the air of invincibility around the most dominant Indian politician in decades, it said.
"Going into this election, Modi had set a goal of winning 400 seats in the lower house of parliament, or Lok Sabha. But as results began to trickle in Tuesday night, it quickly became clear his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party wouldn't even have enough to form a simple majority. Instead, for the first time since coming to power a decade ago, Modi will be reliant on longstanding local coalition partners to keep him in government," CNN said.
Tuesday's result is a humbling moment for a leader whose lead in the polls was lauded by supporters as unassailable, it said.
The verdict marks a surprising revival for the Congress Party-led INDIA Opposition alliance, defying earlier predictions of its decline, and sharply diverging from both exit polls and pre-election surveys, the BBC said.
The election results show that Brand Modi has lost some of its shine, indicating that even Modi is susceptible to anti-incumbency. In other words, he is not as invincible as many of his supporters believed. This offers renewed hope to the Opposition, it said.
The results will also energise the much-criticised Congress-led Opposition, the BBC added.
"This election is undoubtedly a rebuke for Modi and the BJP," Time magazine quoted Milan Vaishnav, the Director of the South Asia Program at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, as saying.
"After ten years in power, it was in many ways a referendum on its track record in office and there are clearly many Indians who are feeling restless and uneasy."
Modi now faces a more powerful Opposition than at any point over the past decade, it said.