Modi’s BJP wins landslide in India’s most populous state

Both the BJP and the Congress party failed to win a majority of seats in western Goa state and northeastern Manipur state. Officials said the result was the biggest majority in the state for any party since 1977.

Echoing similar sentiments, Union Minister Piyush Goyal also heaped praise on Prime Minister Modi’s leadership and BJP president Amit Shah for playing the role of a sculptor in scripting victory for the saffron party.

Manjhi said PM Narendra Modi had changed the course of national politics. Congress’s current scion, Rahul Gandhi, had hoped to turn a strong showing for its UP alliance into a springboard for the 2019 general election.

Most psephologists in these polls had projected 160-210 seats for BJP in the state, which sends 403 lawmakers to the Assembly. Unlike the core BJP upper caste voters, the MBCs which constitute almost 15 percent of the total electorate in UP as a community are aggressive and tenacious in electoral politics. They had made a decision to drift away both from BSP and Congress and this is the reason both the parties lost their common voters to BJP.

The Congress won 28 seats in the northeastern state followed by BJP with about 21 seats.

That was blamed for the party’s defeat in Bihar elections.

Many analysts say that she could well be the surprise factor this election.

In another northern state, Uttarakhand, the ruling party won 56 of 70 seats and was leading in one other constituency, wresting power from the Congress party, the main opposition at the national level.

However, the exit polls expected the SP to perform better.

While two polls gave the BJP a massive majority with at least 46 seats, the maximum a poll gave was 56. Support for the parties traditionally falls along caste lines: The BJP relies on the upper castes’ vote, the Samajwadi Party derives most of its support from Yadav and Muslim voters, and the Bahujan Samaj Party depends on the Dalits, or “Scheduled Classes”, in elections.

Parsekar finished second with 9,371 votes in Mandrem assembly seat with the Congress’ Dayanand Sopte of the Congress winning with 16,490 votes.

Water Resources Minister Dayanand Mandrekar also lost to Goa Forward’s Vinod Palyenkar by 1,441 votes while Industries Minister Mahadev Naik lost to Congress’ Subhash Shirodkar by 4,870 votes. Shah – known as the “Chanakya” of BJP – managed to forge successful broad coalition of castes in UP. In fact, among Muslims also the caste factor deepened and worked in favour of BJP. Terming the BJP victory as “shocking” and “difficult to swallow”, BSP leader Mayawati alleged that electronic voting machines had been tampered with in such a way that whichever button was pressed, the vote went to the BJP.

Point 8: However, after the results were out, Parrikar said the BJP remains in the race for forming the government.

In some of the remotest villages of Uttar Pradesh, where the demonetization policy was thought to have caused the most disruption, many voters said that even though they were struggling, they supported the move because it took on the dishonest rich. Voters in many constituencies complained of the poor candidates put up by both the BJP and the SP/INC.

Once Akhilesh took over the party’s reins, the Congress sealed an alliance with a Samajwadi Party hurt by the public battles within.

SP had won 224 seats of the 401 it contested, garnering a vote share of 29.15 per cent with an upswing of 3.72 per cent over the last elections. Indian pundits, a normally quarrelsome bunch, are virtually unanimous in crediting Mr Modi himself as the biggest vote-getter.