Modi’s party set for landslide win in India’s most populous state

The election is a three-way race between the BJP, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party, led by Mayawati, a four-time former chief minister.

Most psephologists in these polls had projected 160-210 seats for BJP in the state, which sends 403 lawmakers to the Assembly. The obvious target was to consolidate the Dalit and OBC votes that make up the majority in most Indian states including Uttar Pradesh. Officials said the result was the biggest majority in the state for any party since 1977.

This was the first time Assembly elections were held after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s shocking decision to demonetise old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes previous year on November 8. The party’s influence has dwindled since. “We will win in Uttar Pradesh”.

The one blip for the BJP was that it fared less well in the other three states that elected new legislatures.

In Punjab, the BJP, in an alliance with the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) had won 68 of the 117 Assembly seats in 2012.

Most polls also forecast a close fight between the Congress, which is seeking to return to power in Punjab after a hiatus of 10 years, and Arvind Kejriwal’s AAP, making its debut in the assembly polls in the state. While some like the BJP and BSP traded charges, the Congress hit back at pollsters for having no good news for it.

“Punjab, Goa and Manipur would certainly suggest that the BJP isn’t unbeatable but strategy needs to shift from criticism to positive alternate. A spade is a spade is a spade”. Starting it off with the acronym “SCAM” in the west and hopping to the “UP ka god liya beta” quip in Awadh, Narendra Modi stirred the political landscape and struck a chord with his voters with equal ease.

By withdrawing cash worth some 15.4 trillion rupees, 86% of that in circulation, Modi hoped to deliver a blow to “black money”, untaxed wealth, counterfeit bills and corruption.

Nearly four in 10 voters backed Modi’s party, the election commission said as it tallied the last votes, close to the party’s vote share in Uttar Pradesh in the 2014 national election when it won the biggest national majority in three decades.

The state elections are crucial at national level because each state nominates a proportional number of representatives to India’s upper house of parliament.

Modi invested heavily in the campaign, addressing several rallies and giving the campaign a final push by campaigning for three days in his Lok Sabha constituency of Varanasi. However, the saffron party will fall short of majority with somewhere close or less than 200 seats in Uttar Pradesh. He said the first message is that this indicates “it is a bigger wave than 2014 [parliamentary] elections and that too after two and a half year of Modi government”. We have also got a lot of support from the central government. What is remarkable is that in a state that has always been dominated by caste politics, the BJP did not give a ticket to even a single Muslim candidate.

The ruling Badals in Punjab had been accused of complicity in the rampant drug trade in the state, and the Congress and AAP made the most of this opportunity to undermine SAD’s fortunes in the elections.

Exit polls say the BJP will win, but these have been proven wrong before. The BJP has long insisted that the mosque, built in 1528, stood on the very spot where Ram was born.

Economists now expect Modi to launch initiatives aimed at flushing out ill-gotten gains from real estate, gold and campaign finance.