India’s Modi govt faces no-confidence vote over ethnic clashes

India’s parliament on Wednesday authorised a no-confidence vote against Narendra Modi’s government by an alliance of opposition parties, to force the prime minister to address in detail concerns about ethnic clashes in a northeastern state.
Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has a clear majority of 301 members in the 542-seat lower house of parliament, so the no-confidence vote will not impact its stability.
The opposition instead wants to trigger a debate about over the violence in remote, BJP-ruled Manipur state, in which more than 130 people have been killed and 60,000 displaced since it began in early May.
Approving the opposition motion, lower house speaker Om Birla said he would soon decide when the debate and vote would take place.
The ethnic tensions in the small state of 3.2 million people are seen as a rare security and political failure by Modi’s government, which will face a national election by May 2024.