Mumbai: Transgender mystic Zoya Lobo turns over three oracle cards, studies them for a minute and looks up. PM Narendra Modi will definitely win India’s general election this summer, she proclaims.
Clairvoyant Larra Shah also predicts a victory for Modi owing to his “extremely powerful aura”, but astrologer Raj Kumar Sharma thinks opposition leader Rahul Gandhi will win because his party’s moon sign is Virgo. Vedic astrology is big business in Hindu-majority India and stargazers are making a host of predictions for the world’s biggest election starting next month — their many followers hanging on every utterance.
Shah, 49, a celebrity holistic healer who practises tarot reading, says most of them will plump for Modi, himself a devout Hindu. “When it comes to tarot cards Modi is like the emperor or the magician where the power of self-knowledge, of spiritual balance, of karma, is in perfection,” she tells AFP. Rahul Gandhi is more like the devil because he’s always confused. There is a conflict there because he is a Gemini so has a dual personality,” Shah adds.
Shah expects Modi, 68, to be returned, but with a vastly reduced majority. Pre-election polling suggests an even closer contest, with many forecasting neither party will win the 272 seats needed for a majority, who won 282 of the 545 in 2014. Lobo also has a prediction that hits closer to home for her — a 35 percent chance Modi will do something to help India’s two-million-strong transgender community.