“Together we grow. Together we prosper. Together we will build a strong and inclusive India. India wins yet again.”
NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday led his Bharatiya Janata Party towards a super-sized victory for a second term in office, as his message of nationalism, security, Hindu pride and a new India was wholeheartedly embraced by voters across large swathes of the country.
With the elections establishing the 68-year-old Modi as the most popular leader in decades, the partial vote count released by the Election Commission showed that BJP will not only surpass its 2014 performance but also cross 300 seats on its own.
Until 2.00 a.m. of Friday, the BJP had won 274 seats and was leading in 29 of the 542 Lok Sabha seats that went to polls in seven phases in April and May. It demolished the combined opposition with the Congress Party stuck at 47 confirmed victories and a lead in 5 seats, according to the partial results.
Modi easily won his seat in Varanasi with a margin of over 4.3 lakh votes while party president Amit Shah took Gandhinagar in their home state of Gujarat by over 5.5 lakh votes.
Modi tweeted, “Together we grow. Together we prosper. Together we will build a strong and inclusive India. India wins yet again.”
Modi and Shah arrived at the party headquarters in New Delhi to a rapturous welcome by supporters. Modi waved victory signs with both arms in the air as rose petals were showered on the duo, the two most powerful men in the country. He then proceeded to garland the statues of BJP idealogue Deen Dayal Upadhyaya and Shyama Prasad Mukherjee.
Minutes later, a gigantic garland in BJP colours of saffron and green was held around Modi by other dignitaries.
Addressing the gathering, Modi promised to devote “every moment” of his time and “every fibre” of his being for the people of India and said the country will now have only two castes — the poor and those who want to alleviate poverty. (See Page 7)
In the end, Modi’s proclamation of “Ab ki baar 300 paar” just a few days ago looks set to come true as Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s campaign slogan of “chowkidar chor hai” and promises of annual income guarantee found no resonance among voters. In almost all the states where BJP won, its vote share was more than 50 per cent.
The results have raised questions about Gandhi’s leadership and his party’s future. At a press conference, Gandhi refused to address that issue, saying the party will hold a meeting on Friday to discuss the future. “The people of India have decided that Narendra Modi will be the PM again and I fully respect it,” Gandhi told reporters.
He also congratulated Modi and BJP, adding that today is not the day to go into the cause of the defeat but to respect the will of the people. If the trends stay until final results, the BJP and its allies in the National Democratic Alliance will end up with 353 seats, up from 336 in 2014. The BJP, which is now tantalisingly close to the 300 mark in Lok Sabha, had won 282 seats on its own in the last election.
The results are a ringing endorsement of Modi’s popularity, his government’s achievements in the last five years and his campaign, which centred around national security following the Balakot air strikes, nationalism and Hindutva.
He also relentlessly attacked the Congress for what he called its dynastic legacy, and blamed it for the country’s woes, including endemic corruption. The opposition had criticised the BJP campaign as divisive and polarising. Still, the results show that the Modi wave and the party’s brilliant election management swept across geographies, caste lines, age, gender and economic status.
In the politically critical state of Uttar Pradesh, where the Samajwadi Party-Bahujan Samaj Party combine had posed a stiff challenge, the BJP is expected to win 59 of the 80 seats at stake.
Although the BJP had won 71 seats in the last elections, the performance is far better than the 30-40 seats many exit polls had forecast.
Even Gandhi lost his seat in Amethi to BJP’s Smriti Irani. He, however, won the Wayanad seat in Kerala by a margin of 431770 votes.
The Modi wave not only swept through the Hindi heartland and Gujarat, as was expected, but also bulldozed through West Bengal, Odisha, Maharashtra and Karnataka. Only Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh appeared untouched. Even in Telangana, where it was expected to fare poorly, the BJP is expected to win four seats, while the Telangana Rashtra Samiti will get nine.
The results were staggering for BJP in the Hindi-speaking states, including those where Congress had won in the recent Assembly elections: it swept all but one of the 29 seats in Madhya Pradesh, 24 out of 25 in Rajasthan and nine out of 11 in Chhattisgarh. Similar was the story in Bihar, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Maharashtra, Delhi and notably Karnataka, where it is expected to win 25 out of 28 seats.
In Odisha, the BJP made huge gains, forging ahead in nine of the 21 seats while the Biju Janata Dal was ahead in 12. In 2014, the BJD had won 20 seats and BJP had taken one.
In West Bengal, a stronghold of Trinamool Congress Party, the BJP made terrific gains with 18 expected victories, up from two in 2014, all at the expense of Left parties. The TMC is expected to win 22.
Out of the 543 Lok Sabha seats, elections were held in 542 constituencies as the EC had cancelled polls to the Vellore constituency on the ground of excessive use of money power. (PTI)