Accepting felicitations from party leaders and supporters at BJP headquarters, Modi said he saw the election results, particularly in Uttar Pradesh, as the “foundation of the new India”.
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The BJP is also set to form government in smaller state of Uttarakhand, while a ruling alliance of the BJP and another regional party were ousted from power in the agricultural state of Punjab.
The 66-year-old banked that his charisma and thundering rhetoric from the rally pulpit, both used to spectacular effect in the 2014 general election, would sway votes his way again.
Unusually for state elections, the BJP never projected a particular politician as a chief ministerial candidate. Mr Shah attributed the party’s victory to demonetisation and said that with it the poor had come closer to the Narendra Modi government.
Thirdly, midway through his first term, Mr Modi becomes the front-runner in the 2019 general elections for a second term in power.
The BJP’s large number of UP (and other) assembly seats will also strengthen its clout in indirect elections (due in June and July) to the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of parliament, where it has been in a minority.
The margin of victory in Uttar Pradesh was the largest seen by any party in more than 30 years. What’s more, PM Modi gave a solicitous reply to Rahul’s wishes.
Indians were forced to queue for hours to exchange their suddenly worthless bills, and the poor struggled to buy daily essentials.
“Modi’s national focus will still be economic development with an added focus on corruption”.
“He appeals to emotion”. “In fact this proves the masses and the poor of India are on the side of demonetization”, he said. The Jat marginalisation was so complete that even in the Jat heartland of Baghpat, once the stronghold of Jat leader and former Prime Minister Charan Singh, the Rashtriya Lok Dal, led by his son Ajit Singh, the voters preferred the BJP. From one end of the Britain-sized state to another, voters proudly declared confidence that Modi-ji is the man to sort out India’s myriad woes.
BJP parliamentary board will meet in New Delhi on Sunday evening to discuss the probable names for the post of Chief Minister in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, where it has won comfortable majority in the Assembly elections.
“For us this is a clear indication of the direction that the country is taking, and it is very sad for democracy”, Navaid Hamid, President of the All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat, a non-political umbrella body of Muslim organisations. The BJP also looked poised to retain its hold on the state of Goa.
And Narendra Modi’s recipe to win UP was simple.
“The Samajwadi Party wholeheartedly accepts the verdict of the people of Uttar Pradesh”, spokesman Ghanshyam Tiwari said, conceding defeat. “On the ground, the BJP is not perceived as a casteist party”, Bhanu Joshi, of the Centre of Policy Research, a Delhi-based think tank, told me. From 7 am, the votes for all the states that.
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There was relatively little of the communal divide that Modi and his main henchman, Amit Shah, the hardline Hindu-nationalist BJP present, have generated in the past.
