BJP wins big in UP

Almost one-third of votes have been counted so far.

The BJP’s two allies, the Apna Dal and the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party, together won 13 seats, with the Apna Dal’s 9 seats outdoing the Congress’s 7. Its only consolation was that these are all relatively tiny states, and that Congress did win a resounding triumph over allies of the BJP in Punjab, a relatively rich state with 30m people.

Polls predicted that Modi’s party would retain power in the small state of Goa and take the northern state of Uttarakhand from Congress, and put the BJP narrowly ahead in Manipur, a small region bordering Myanmar.

The overwhelming support for the Hindu nationalist BJP in India’s most populous state indicates that Mr Modi is well placed for an easy re-election victory in the next Parliamentary elections, due in 2019. They forecast a close fight in Punjab between the Congress, which is seeking to return to power after a hiatus of 10 years, and Arvind Kejriwal’s AAP.

The Congress won 28 seats in the northeastern state followed by BJP with about 21 seats. In fact, among Muslims also the caste factor deepened and worked in favour of BJP. The BJP emerged as the big victor of the day, with massive victories in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Modi will have to wait years until the BJP has earned the additional seats necessary to pass his stalled reform measures.

While two polls gave the BJP a massive majority with at least 46 seats, the maximum a poll gave was 56.

But if backed by successful political messaging, a three-way Opposition “grand alliance” would have been able to stop the Modi juggernaut in Uttar Pradesh, the results suggest.

Had Akhilesh, Rahul Gandhi and Mayawati struck a successfully functioning pre-poll alliance, the BJP would have won just 129 seats.

Apart from the Modi factor, the credit for BJP’s electoral success also goes to its party chief Amit Shah’s social engineering formula.

The results themselves are not a great surprise, but the margin of the BJPs win in Uttar Pradesh is greater than predicted.

The regional parties till now were seen as clientelistic, mediating between voters and services, but those voters who felt that their respective parties failed to deliver the promised goods and services were on the lookout for an alternate linkage system for their expectations and Modi (BJP) fitted in the framework with panache and perfection.

Congress emerged as the lone giant in 2012 Manipur Assembly polls and achieved a hat trick win by securing 42 of the 60 seats in the state. It’s the biggest majority for any party in the state since 1977. Some strategists of the party’s UP campaign would not like to see him now enjoying the fruits of their labour.

At the same time, however, a BJP-dominated state assembly in Uttar Pradesh could hinder Modi’s agenda. The BJP showing is the vote for politics of performance and proves the people of India are with Prime Minister Modi, he said. Congress Chief Minister Harish Rawat lost both the seats to BJP.

“We were always nervous that overexposing the prime minister in the final stages of the election could make us look desperate”, said Keshav Prasad Maurya, the BJP’s state leader in Uttar Pradesh. Unlike the lower house, whose members are elected by direct vote, the upper house is elected by state assemblies.