As the Election Commission counts votes of assembly elections to five states on Saturday, some trends are clear: Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is on course for a landslide victory in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most important battleground state. The Congress, meanwhile, is set to return to power in Punjab. Here are the highlights from the vote counting:
•The BJP is leading in or has won 310 of 403 seats in Uttar Pradesh, much higher than the 202 seats it needs to form a government on its own. The BJP has more than doubled its vote share in the state to close to 40% since the last assembly elections, though it has dropped slightly from the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
Election Results 2017: Live updates
•Captain Amarinder Singh has double reason to celebrate today—the Congress, led by him, is set to return to power in Punjab, and that too on his 75th birthday.
•In one of the biggest upsets, Uttarakhand chief minister Harish Rawat has lost the Haridwar (rural) seat to the BJP’s Yatishwaranand by over 12,000 votes. He also lost the Kichha seat to the BJP’s Rajesh Shukla. Rawat’s credentials as the new vikas purush of Uttarakhand did not find any resonance with the state’s voters.
•BSP chief Mayawati, whose party is has performed poorly in the Uttar Pradesh elections, has alleged that the electronic voting machines (EVMs) were tampered with. PTI reports that she has written to the Election Commission demanding immediate stoppage of counting and declaration of results in UP and holding of fresh polls using paper ballots. “The results in UP and Uttarakhand are surprising and not palatable to anyone...it seems EVMs did not accept votes polled for any party other than BJP... Muslims constitute 20% votes in the state and the BJP did not give a single ticket to Muslims... but in Muslim-dominated seats also the results went in the BJP’s favour,” she said.
•BJP president Amit Shah, addressing a press conference at the BJP headquarters in New Delhi, said that the party was going to form the government in four states. “Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur—we are going to form government in all the four states. We have lost in Punjab but our alliance there has won more than 40 seats. This will usher in a change in India’s polity,” Shah told reporters.
•Mint’s executive editor Anil Padmanabhan writes that the Uttar Pradesh victory will revive Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s proclivity for risk taking. He foresees more brave moves in the areas of labour reform, anti-corruption, governance and land acquisition.
Track Assembly Election Results 2017
•What will the Uttar Pradesh results mean for the BJP’s Rajya Sabha numbers? The BJP has 56 Rajya Sabha MPs, compared with the Congress’s 59. This is a legacy issue for the BJP, as it had failed to perform well in assembly elections outside its traditional strongholds until the so-called Modi wave of 2014. Will its huge win in Uttar Pradesh help the BJP close this gap? It sends 31 members to the Rajya Sabha, the highest for any state. With this kind of a majority, the BJP will now have a huge share in this number. But the victory is unlikely to help the BJP close the gap with the opposition till the 2019 general elections. This is because only 10 out of UP’s 31 Rajya Sabha seats will come up for re-election before the 2019 elections.
•Goa deputy chief minister Francis D’Souza defeated his nearest rival Vinod Phadke of the MGP in Mapusa constituency. D’Souza, who had expressed a desire to be made the chief minister in November 2014 when PM Modi made then Goa chief minister Manohar Parrikar defence minister, may again make that claim if BJP gets close to the majority mark.
•Manipur chief minister Okram Ibobi Singh has won the Thoubal assembly constituency by over 8,000 votes.
•Activist Irom Sharmila, who contested against Ibobi Singh in the Thoubal seat from her newly formed Peoples’ Resurgence and Justice Alliance party, could get only 90 votes.
•The BJP and Congress may be giving each other a tough fight in Goa, but the state has recorded the maximum number of NOTA (none of the above) votes in these elections. In Goa, 1.2% voters pressed the NOTA button, followed by 1% in Uttarakhand.
•The results have meant bad news for the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which contested assembly elections in Goa and Punjab for the first time. AAP’s national convener Arvind Kejriwal said the party accepts the people’s verdict and will continue with its “struggle”. “We accept people’s mandate. All volunteers worked hard. Our struggle will continue,” Kejriwal tweeted.
•Rita Bahuguna Joshi, who defected from the Congress to the BJP last year, has won the Lucknow Cantt. seat, defeating the SP’s Aparna Yadav, who is Mulayam Singh Yadav’s daughter-in-law.
•In Dadri, the Uttar Pradesh village which achieved notoriety after 52-year-old Mohammad Akhlaq was lynched over rumours that he and his family had consumed beef, the BJP’s Tejpal Singh Nagar comfortably defeated the BSP’s Satveer Singh Gurjar with a margin of over 80,000 votes.
•Gangster-turned politician Mukhtar Ansari (BSP), whose candidacy had raised controversy, is now leading by more than 17,000 votes in the Mau constituency.
•In humiliation for the BJP, Goa chief minister Laxmikant Parsekar lost the Mandrem seat to Congress candidate Dayanand Sopte by 7,219 votes.
•Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal defeated his nearest rival Congress candidate Captain Amarinder Singh by 22,770 votes from Lambi assembly constituency. Singh had earlier won the Patiala seat by a whopping margin and is set to take over as the next chief minister.
•Prime Minister Narendra Modi has congratulated Congress leader Amarinder Singh on the electoral victory in Punjab. Sitting chief minister Parkash Singh Badal said he will resign on Sunday and ask his son and Shiromani Akali Dal president Sukhbir Badal to form a committee so that the reasons behind the defeat can be discussed in detail.
•Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said that the loss in Uttar Pradesh “hurts” and the Congress needs to take tough decisions. “Yes, UP is a bad loss, it hurts...I agree that, in UP, we need fundamental restructuring thinking for the Congress as a whole. These have to be hard, tough decisions about strategy.”
•It may not be the end of the road for poll strategist Prashant Kishor but the verdict in UP does cast a shadow on his future and his efforts at strategizing for a Congress win.
•National Conference leader and former J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah said on Twitter that it was not a “wave” in UP but a “tsunami”. “In a nutshell there is no leader today with a pan India acceptability who can take on Modi & the BJP in 2019,” he tweeted.
•West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday congratulated the “winners” of the assembly polls in five states and asked the “losers” not to lose heart. She, however, did not name any party or individual in her tweets.
•The Uttar Pradesh election results not only underline Rahul Gandhi’s failure, but also that of Priyanka Gandhi, said Union minister Smriti Irani. Taking a dig at Rahul over Congress’ poor performance in the crucial Uttar Pradesh polls, Irani said only blaming the AICC vice president “will be an injustice to him”. “I think the sibling (Priyanka) waiting in the wings has equally failed. So to say only Rahul has failed will be injustice to him,” she told reporters in New Delhi.
•Singer Asha Bhosle said that she was proud to be a part of “great Indian democracy”. “No guesswork required re who’s winning the next Lok Sabha,” she tweeted.
