President Droupadi Murmu hosted a dinner on Wednesday for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the outgoing council of ministers at the Rashtrapati Bhawan here. The event was also attended by Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar and Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla. “President Droupadi Murmu hosted a dinner for the outgoing Union Council of Ministers, led by Prime Minister @narendramodi, at Rashtrapati Bhawan,” the President’s office said in a post on ‘X’.

Earlier in the day, Modi tendered his resignation to the President, who accepted it and asked him to continue till the new Government assumes office. “The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, met the President today and tendered his resignation along with the Council of Ministers,” an official statement said. The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) won a majority in the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections.

 

While the NDA is comfortably above the majority mark of 272 in the 543-member Lok Sabha, the BJP, which won 240 seats, has fallen short of the magic number for the first time since 2014. Meanwhile, Modi has been unanimously elected as the NDA leader during a meeting of the alliance here, thus paving the way for him to take the oath for a third straight term as the head of the coalition Government. NDA MPs will meet on June 7 to formally elect Modi as their leader and the alliance leaders will then meet the President to submit their letters of support, former Bihar chief minister and founder of the Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular) Jitan Ram Manjhi said after attending the meeting.

In a related development, the President dissolved the current Lok Sabha on the advice of the Prime Minister Modi-led Cabinet. The term of the 17th Lok Sabha was to end on June 16 and before that, a new Government had to be established.