In India’s Gujarat state, Modi’s party is poised to win by a landslide.
Right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat is expected to hand the Hindu nationalist party a significant victory on Thursday ahead of the 2024 federal elections.
The BJP, which has not suffered a defeat in state assembly elections there since 1995, is a stronghold in the western industrial state. Before taking office as prime minister in 2014, Modi served as Gujarat’s chief minister for 13 years.
Early vote tallying showed that the BJP was in the lead in more than 80 percent of the 182 seats, and it was on track to win a greater majority than it did in 2017, when it won 99 seats in the previous state assembly elections.
The BJP also planned to outperform its 2002 victory in Gujarat, where it won 127 seats.
Because of his substantial support from the Hindu majority in India, Modi continues to enjoy widespread popularity throughout the nation. His BJP has long been charged with fostering animosity and division in the nation through its anti-Muslim rhetoric, and this was evident in its Gujarat campaign.
The BJP appears to be seeking to alter the events surrounding the anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat in 2002, which saw roving bands of Hindu extremists kill hundreds of people, predominantly Muslims, just months after Narendra Modi was chosen as the state’s chief minister.
In the years leading up to the Gujarat election, Modi, who resigned his position as chief minister to accept the top office in the nation in 2014, extensively campaigned across the state in hopes of winning a third term as prime minister in 2024.
The Indian National Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which was born in 2012 out of an anti-corruption campaign, were the primary opponents of the BJP in Gujarat.
The AAP was ahead in nine seats after winning none the previous time, while the 137-year-old Congress party was leading in 26 seats, a far cry from the 77 seats it won in 2017.
According to reports, the Congress is expected to form the government in the tiny Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh, giving the opposition and secular parties a boost.
According to results released on Wednesday, the BJP also lost control of the municipal corporation in the nation’s capital, Delhi, to the AAP.
