Modi’s party scores big in state elections
Huge victory puts India’s ruling BJP in top spot ahead of 2024 national polls
“The party which has maximum sway among the electorate in (Uttar Pradesh) is seen as the ruler of India.” SHYAMALENDU MAJUMDAR
College professor
India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, secured victory in four significant regional elections, including in the nation’s most populous and politically important Uttar Pradesh state, putting Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a pole position ahead of the country’s next general elections scheduled for 2024.
The BJP won a second consecutive term in UP, Uttarakhand and Manipur, and is also set to form government in Goa with support from independents. The Aam Aadmi Party, or AAP, which governs Delhi, secured victory by a big margin in Punjab where India’s grand old party, the Indian National Congress, had been in power.
Victory in four key states means a tailwind for Modi’s BJP ahead of national elections, while dampening the spirit of opposition parties, said Sanjay Rao Ayde, head of political science department at St Stephen’s College, New Delhi.
The BJP’s popularity has been helped by a combination of Hindu nationalism and delivery of Modi’s “public welfare schemes” to the poor and his personal charisma. The federal government has distributed free food to the economically weaker sections of the society, especially during the pandemic, and free COVID-19 vaccines to different groups.
Securing victory in UP, home to about 240 million people and 130 million voters, is the single biggest political prize for any political party in India, political analysts noted.
The BJP win marked the first time in three decades that an incumbent government retained power in the state. Many voters were apparently convinced that law and order has improved significantly in UP over the last five years and that it was necessary to hand another term for the ruling regime.
The win is bound to give a huge push to BJP’s Hindu-first agenda, according to analysts.
“It doesn’t really matter that UP is still considered an economically laggard state, or it is still sharply divided along the lines of castes and religions, or it continues to be ridden with ills such as poverty, social discriminations, unemployment, farmers’ plight and agitation, etc,” said political scientist Shyamalendu Majumdar, who serves as a professor at a college in Kolkata.
“Uttar Pradesh serves as an electoral barometer in the larger context.
The party which has maximum sway among the electorate in this state is seen as the ruler of India. In the 542-member House, Uttar Pradesh alone has 80 seats,” said Majumdar, referring to the lower house of Indian parliament.
Surajit C. Mukhopadhyay, who teaches sociology at Amity University Chhattisgarh, also noted that “by dint of its size and population, Uttar Pradesh can influence Indian polity in a manner that few other states can do”.
UP lies at the center of the BJP’s experiment of a Hindu “rashtra” — a Hindu theological nation — in place of a secular republic, he said, pointing out that it was in UP that an old mosque, popularly called Babri masjid, was destroyed by the followers of Hindutva in 1992.
The state elections were seen as a political trailer for the 2024 parliamentary elections in India where UP, as usual, is expected to play a crucial role in determining who will rule the country.
At the moment there seems to be no way in which the BJP can be stopped, which could mean that India’s secular Constitution might “be in jeopardy”, Mukhopadhyay said.
“The worries of UP’s 20 percent Muslims are bound to deepen.”
By scoring a huge victory in UP, the BJP further consolidates the rise of Yogi Adityanath, who has been the state’s chief minister for five years and has proved himself as a powerful leader.
Also on the ascent is AAP’s top leader and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, who, by securing a big victory in Punjab, has positioned himself as a prospective national leader.
Meanwhile, the result shows that the Congress, which had held power for most of India’s history and ruled most of the states since the nation’s independence in 1947, is continuing its rapid decline. The party won just two seats in Uttar Pradesh.