The party of Narendra Modi wins a decisive victory in Uttar Pradesh

“It was this combination that propelled Narendra Modi and the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections in the state and that momentum has been maintained”, CPI (M) Polit Bureau said in a statement.

Should the BJP perform well in the vote but still fall short of a majority in Uttar Pradesh, it would have to form a coalition with one of its opponent parties in the state assembly.

The BJP also won an overwhelming majority in the neighbouring state of Uttarakhand, ousting the Congress from power with 57 out of 70 seats. Besides, the party is also set to emerge victor in Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur.

If the BJP victory in Uttar Pradesh was all about astute planning, caste calculations and public anger against the feud in the SP family, Brand Modi came as a force multiplier, delivering in the typical “shock-and-awe” style. Still, a win in Uttar Pradesh would change Modi’s expectations for the remainder of his first term in office and a potential second term.

With its inroads in Manipur, the BJP has proved that its success in Assam in 2016 wasn’t a fluke and that it was now a truly national party with a pan India presence. The INC is also narrowly leading in Goa and Manipur.

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

The Election Commission said that partial returns showed the BJP had won by a clear majority.

Modi relied on his own charisma to clinch crucial votes in poor and agrarian Uttar Pradesh, but his campaign manager Amit Shah also takes credit for fielding the right candidates in a region where many people vote along caste and religious lines.

So, what do the exit polls predict for Uttar Pradesh? For the BJP, the electoral boost comes as a popular validation of the Modi government’s policies at the Centre. They insinuated, for instance, that other parties had showered particular favours on Muslims voters-who in fact are generally worse off than their Hindu compatriots.

In Punjab, however, anti-incumbency sentiment finally sank the Akali Dal-BJP combination, and returned the Congress to power after a gap of 10 years, with 77 of the 117 seats. Kejriwal is the only leader who would be seen as Modi’s strongest rival. The UP election was projected as a fight between SP’s Muslim-Yadav combination and BSP’s Jatavs vs other castes, which were supposed to vote for the BJP. “These results will set Indian politics in a new direction”, he said at a press conference at the party’s New Delhi headquarters. The Congress was leading in only a dozen seats of the over 100-seats it had contested as part of the alliance.

But the BJP’s votes in 183 of the seats it has won are less than the combined votes of the Samajwadi-Congress alliance and Mayawati’s party, whom outgoing chief minister Akhilesh Yadav had tried courting on the eve of the results.

Most marginal among the Dalits were overwhelmed with the connect and supposed accessibility to the main authority in the name of Narendra Modi.

A source close to the BJP president tells me that the groundwork had begun immediately after the Lok Sabha victory and been assiduously followed up till a few months back all the way up to the ticket distribution stage. Like Indira Gandhi, Modi was able to stand forth as a champion of the poor.