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03-06-2024
Bureau Report + Agencies
NEW DELHI/ GUWAHATI: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party has won the regional vote in Arunachal Pradesh, a state bordering China, while a local party swept to power in Sikkim, a Himalayan state, officials and politicians said on Sunday.
Provincial elections in Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim were held on April 19, simultaneously with the first phase of the national polls.
The BJP comfortably retained power in Arunchal Pradesh by winning 45 of the 60 seats.
Modi on social media X said the people of Arunachal Pradesh had given “an unequivocal mandate to politics of development”.
A senior BJP politician Ashok Singhal said the results were a “curtain raiser” ahead of national election results that will be declared on Tuesday.
“This is just the trailer ahead of the real show on June 4. The massive victory that PM Modi will win has started with Arunachal Pradesh,” he said.
Politicians and analysts say state elections do not always influence the outcome of the general elections but exit polls on Saturday projected a big win for Modi’s alliance national polls.
In Sikkim, the Sikkim Krantikari Morcha, a regional party that allied with the BJP for national polls in 2019 won by a landslide, securing 31 of the 32 seats in the state assembly.
Neither the BJP nor the national opposition Congress party won any seats in Sikkim.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP-led alliance is projected to win a big majority in the general election that concluded on Saturday, TV exit polls said, suggesting it would do better than expected by most analysts.
Most exit polls projected the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) could win a two-thirds majority in the 543-member lower house of parliament, where 272 is needed for a simple majority. A two-thirds majority will allow the government to usher in far-reaching amendments in the constitution.
A summary of five major exit polls projected the NDA could win between 353 and 401 seats, a number that is likely to boost financial markets when they reopen on Monday. The NDA won 353 seats in the 2019 general election, of which BJP accounted for 303.
Three of the five polls projected BJP alone could win more than the 303 it won in 2019.
The opposition “INDIA” alliance led by Rahul Gandhi’s Congress party was projected to win between 125 and 182 seats.
Exit polls, which are conducted by polling agencies, have a patchy record in India as they have often got the outcome wrong, with analysts saying it is a challenge to get them right in the large and diverse country.
In his first comments after voting ended, Modi claimed victory without referring to the exit polls.
“I can say with confidence that the people of India have voted in record numbers to re-elect the NDA government,” he said on X, without providing evidence of his claim.
“The opportunistic INDI Alliance failed to strike a chord with the voters. They are casteist, communal and corrupt.”
Pre-election surveys said the BJP would easily keep its majority in the election but the party ran into a spirited campaign by the “INDIA” alliance, sowing some doubt about how close the race might be, and many political analysts had predicted the BJP’s margin of victory would be narrower than or close to the 2019 tally.
