Modi’s party claims victory in four Indian states
NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party claimed election victory in four Indian states yesterday, calling it a ‘historic mandate’ that would take the country’s politics in a new direction.
BJP leader Amit Shah said the party would form governments in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, where early counting showed it had won an overwhelming victory, as well as in Goa, Uttarakhand and Manipur.
“This is a historic mandate by the people of these states for BJP. These results will set Indian politics in a new direction,” he said at a press conference at the party’s New Delhi headquarters.
India’s Election Commission is due to announce the final results later yesterday, but early counting shows the BJP leading in four out of five states where elections have been held over the past two months.
The opposition Congress Party retained power in just one state, northern Punjab. Shah said the results were a defeat for ‘dynastic politics’, in an apparent jibe at Congress, led by Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul.
“The people have accepted the politics of performance,” he said, promising that the faith they had placed in the party and in Modi would be rewarded. Since winning the first overall majority in three decades in the 2014 general election, Modi’s dominance has been largely unchallenged and he already looks well-placed for re-election in 2019.
“The poor have given a decisive verdict that Modi is our leader and is working for our welfare... women, youth and even minorities have voted for us. It is an extraordinary win for the party,” said Ravi Shankar Prasad, a senior BJP leader and the law minister.
Even the major cash shortages which followed November’s shock ban on high denomination bank notes appears to have done little damage to his standing, particularly with Congress in disarray.
Celebrations broke out at BJP’s headquarters in Uttar Pradesh capital Lucknow where euphoric supporters danced to drum beats and distributed sweets.
“The state should now witness rapid development. Corruption and nepotism in governance would also come down,” one supporter, Viti Kumar, a housewife, told AFP.
Upbeat scenes also unfolded at BJP’s national headquarters in Delhi where men and women waved giant flags bearing the party’s lotus symbol and chanted ‘Modi, Modi’. The multiphase elections, which began in February, ended on Wednesday after which exit polls – that have proved unreliable in the past – were allowed to be published. The only crumb of comfort for Congress – which has led India for most of the post-independence period – was in Punjab.
Uttar Pradesh has been ruled since 2012 by the socialist Samajwadi Party whose leader and current Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav went into an alliance for the election with Congress. Yadav has been trying to tap into the pain from Modi’s cash ban, campaigning alongside Congress’ frontman Rahul Gandhi.
“The Samajwadi Party wholeheartedly accepts the verdict of the people of Uttar Pradesh. I congratulate BJP for winning the vote of the people,” Samajwadi Party spokesman Ghanshyam Tiwari told reporters in Lucknow.
The BJP fared poorly in the last UP elections, winning only 47 out of 403 assembly seats, but it clinched 73 out of 80 parliamentary constituencies in 2014 with Modi standing in the holy city of Varanasi.
A BJP win in Uttar Pradesh would have significant implications for the make-up of the Rajya Sabha – the upper house of parliament.
Several of Modi’s key reforms such as a nationwide sales tax have stalled in the chamber due to his lack of a BJP majority.
Its make-up is based on parties’ strength in the state assemblies, with the biggest states supplying the largest number of MPs. — AFP
This is a historic mandate by the people of these states for BJP. These results will set Indian politics in a new direction. — Amit Shah, BJP leader