[The margin of victory in Uttar Pradesh was the largest seen by any party in more than 30 years. It gives Mr. Modi a significant advantage in the national elections in 2019, which in turn would bring him closer to his long-term goal of becoming a leader of historic significance, steering India away from its more socialist, secular past.]
By Geeta Anand
 |
| In New Delhi, supporters of the Bharatiya Janata Party celebrated in the state of Uttar Pradesh on Saturday. The vote was seen as a referendum on the prime minister. Credit Tsering Topgyal/Associated Press |
NEW DELHI — Prime
Minister Narendra Modi led his party to a landslide victory in India’s largest
state on Saturday, consolidating his power and putting him in a strong position
to win re-election in 2019.
The
scale of the victory in Uttar Pradesh’s legislative elections was all the more
stunning because it followed Mr. Modi’s politically risky decision to eliminate
most of India’s cash. The vote was seen as a referendum on the prime minister,
who campaigned vigorously in recent days in Uttar Pradesh, which, with a
population of more than 200 million, would be the world’s sixth largest country
if it were independent.
“This is
a stupendous achievement,” said Ashok Malik, a fellow with the Observer
Research Foundation, based in New Delhi. “Here you had a prime minister making
himself the face of the election in the absence of a local leader and stitching
together a coalition across the state.”
The
margin of victory in Uttar Pradesh was the largest seen by any party in more
than 30 years. It gives Mr. Modi a significant advantage in the national
elections in 2019, which in turn would bring him closer to his long-term goal
of becoming a leader of historic significance, steering India away from its
more socialist, secular past.
Mr.
Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, commonly called the B.J.P., also won at least
one of four other state elections in which ballots were being counted on Saturday.
The weakening India National Congress party, which once dominated the nation’s
politics, won in Punjab, a powerful farming state, and remained in contention
in two smaller states, showing that it was still a factor nationally, though
less so than in years past.
The Aam
Aadmi Party, born of the anticorruption movement that has arisen in India in
recent years, failed to win any state, suggesting it was not yet ready to take
over from the Congress party as the main opposition to Mr. Modi.
Mr. Modi
said on Twitter that his party’s victories were “humbling and overwhelming.”
In Uttar
Pradesh, the Election Commission of India said the Bharatiya Janata Party had
won or was leading in voting for 308 of the 403 seats in the state legislature,
decimating the last-minute anti-Modi coalition cobbled together by Congress and
the local governing party, the Samajwadi Party. By Saturday afternoon, that
coalition had garnered only 57 seats.
The
coalition had appeared to be gaining steam after it was formed early this year,
led by the dynamic, relatively young leader of the Samajwadi Party, Akhilesh
Yadav, 43, whose father founded the party and presided over it for decades.
That
party and the Bahujan Samaj Party, commonly known as the B.S.P., have taken
turns governing Uttar Pradesh in recent decades, in each case putting together
coalitions that consisted mainly of the party leader’s caste group along with
Muslims. But on Saturday afternoon, the B.S.P., led by Kumari Mayawati, a
leader of the Dalit caste, won or was leading in only 20 seats, the election
commission said.
The
scale of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s victory suggested it had bridged such
caste allegiances, some experts said, although it had yet to cross religious
lines to attract large numbers of Muslims. While Mr. Modi has largely steered
clear of divisive language on religion as prime minister, his party has a Hindu
nationalist philosophy, and he was accused of complicity in anti-Muslim
violence as leader of his home state of Gujarat.
“This is
the beginning of a new chapter in the history of India,” Jitendra Singh, a
minister of state in Mr. Modi’s office, told the television station Times Now.
“The Indian voter has learned to rise above caste and creed and vote for
development and the future of India.”
In fact,
although Mr. Modi won the 2014 national elections on a platform of jobs and
development, his economic record is mixed. He has lured more foreign investment
and is close to achieving a long-delayed tax overhaul, but new job creation has
been slow and domestic private investment remains stagnant.
The
International Monetary Fund
earlier this year cut its projected growth rate for India by 1 percentage
point, to 6.6 percent, in large part because of Mr. Modi’s sudden ban on the
country’s largest currency notes in November.
Saturday’s results come less than four months
after Mr. Modi’s Nov. 8 announcement that India’s largest notes, which
comprised 86 percent of the currency, would be banned starting the next day in
a bid to fight corruption. A cash shortfall persisted for weeks as the
government rushed to print enough new notes to replace the banned ones, slowing
many of the country’s cash-based businesses and leaving many poor people
struggling to make ends meet.
As the cash crunch persisted, with millions
waiting in line for notes, Mr. Modi faced criticism that his policy had hurt
lower-income people, and many predicted that voters would punish him at the
polls.
But his big win in Uttar Pradesh — coupled
with victory in another state, Uttarakhand, and gains in the eastern state of
Manipur, where his party had not been a contender in the recent past — suggests
that despite the pain the currency ban caused, voters believed Mr. Modi when he
said it was needed to reduce corruption, some experts said.
“The narrative became less about whether it
was right or wrong on economics, but more about the political narrative, the
way Modi was able to shape it,” said Harsh Pant, a professor of international
relations specializing in India at King’s College in London.
“He said, ‘I am a crusader against
corruption, and you have to rise above your mundane economic realities and
support me.’ And people did,” Mr. Pant said.
Votes were still being counted in the smaller
states of Goa and Manipur on Saturday afternoon, and the margins were so close
that it was not clear who would form the state governments.
Experts said Mr. Modi’s win in Uttar Pradesh
meant his party would be able to take control of the upper house of India’s
Parliament next year. They expected him to have a freer hand in making the
economic policy overhauls that he has long sought to spur development,
including changes in the law to make it easier for companies to acquire farmland
and to fire workers.
But many experts cautioned that it was
unlikely Mr. Modi would make major changes before the 2019 election. When he
previously tried to ease land acquisition rules, he found himself pilloried as
the “suit boot” prime minister, or guardian of the corporate class, these
experts noted.
“He’ll have the space, but he’ll also be
concerned about re-election,” Mr. Malik said. The prime minister may tinker
with the laws, perhaps allowing states to change some labor laws to attract
industry, but “he’s not suddenly going to shift gears in terms of policies,”
Mr. Malik said.
