Modi's BJP registers big victory in bellwether Indian state

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party has won India's most populous state with a big majority, according to the count of a state assembly vote that could offer clues to the national mood before a 2024 general election.

The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had won or was leading in over 250 of the 403 seats in Uttar Pradesh, which it currently rules, according to the Election Commission of India on Thursday.

Modi said that some political experts had said the results of polls in five states in 2017 decided the results of the general election in 2019, which the BJP won with a sweeping majority.

"I believe this time also they will say that the results of 2022 have decided the results of 2024," he said.

Uttar Pradesh is home to about a fifth of India's 1.35 billion people and sends the most legislators to parliament of any state. 

The BJP is the first party since 1985 to retain power in the state, albeit with a reduced majority.

It was a "historic victory", Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, a firebrand monk and poster boy of Hindu nationalism, tweeted after addressing celebrating supporters in state capital Lucknow.

READ MORE: Modi’s popularity is at stake as India prepares for state polls

Poll outcome

The BJP's victory in the northern state came despite the state and federal government's much-criticised handling of Covid-19, lack of jobs and anger over farm reforms that Modi cancelled last year after protests.

The BJP had banked on policies such as free staples for the poor during Covid, a crackdown on crime, and its popularity among the Hindu majority reinforced by the construction of a temple on the site of a razed mosque.

Michael Kugelman of the Wilson Centre tweeted that Adityanath "may be the biggest winner" from the polls. 

"The BJP's performance in UP will likely strengthen his case within the party brass to be viewed as the eventual successor to Narendra Modi," he added.

The BJP retained control of Uttarakhand, and looked set to form governments in Goa and Manipur.

In elections in four smaller states over the past month, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which governs the national capital territory of Delhi, won a landslide victory in Punjab. The incumbent Congress was crushed.

The AAP, whose name means "common man" in Hindi, emerged in 2012 out of an anti-corruption movement. Party leaders said they were ready to take on Modi nationally.

The Congress's humiliation in Punjab further erodes the claim of the Gandhi dynasty's once-mighty party to be the only national alternative to the BJP.

"Humbly accept the people's verdict," senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty who has overseen the party's decline, said on Twitter.

READ MORE: Modi's BJP eyes big win in bellwether India state elections