Which party has won in the General elections of Maldives held in April 2024 ?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — option (1), People's National Congress. The Maldives held elections to its parliament, the People's Majlis, on 21 April 2024. The People's National Congress (PNC), the party of President Mohamed Muizzu, won a decisive majority in its own right — 66 of the chamber's 93 seats — and with allied parties and independents who joined it took its strength to over 70 seats, a result commentators described as an obliteration of the opposition. The vote followed Muizzu's own election as President in 2023 on a platform widely read as tilting the Maldives away from India and toward China, and the parliamentary result gave his government the legislative majority to pursue that agenda without the cohabitation difficulties a divided parliament would have created.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) No party of this name contested or won the Maldives' 2024 parliamentary election. It functions as a decoy built from a plausible-sounding recombination of the winning party's own name, 'People's National Congress', with the country's name substituted for 'People's'.  (c) The Awami League is Bangladesh's party, long led by Sheikh Hasina, not a Maldivian party at all. It is a plausible-sounding South Asian party name that has no role in Maldivian politics, and its inclusion here tests whether a candidate can keep the region's various national parties correctly attached to their own countries.  (d) The Maldives Democratic Party (MDP) is a real and historically significant Maldivian party — it is the party of former President Mohamed Nasheed and had been the dominant force in the outgoing parliament — but it suffered a heavy defeat in the April 2024 election, winning only around 12 seats against the PNC's landslide. 'Democratic Party' here trades on a real, recently prominent name rather than describing the election's actual winner.

Concept: The Maldives is a parliamentary republic whose legislature, the People's Majlis, is elected directly and separately from the presidency. President Mohamed Muizzu, who won the presidency in 2023 on a platform generally read as favouring closer ties with China over India, needed his own party to control the Majlis to govern without obstruction from a legislature still dominated by his predecessor's allies. The parliamentary election of 21 April 2024 delivered exactly that: the People's National Congress won a commanding majority, giving Muizzu's government a free hand to pursue its legislative agenda.

State PCS 2025 Q93 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q93 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer