France24, March 12, 2017 – Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist party won a landslide victory in India’s most important battleground state Saturday, in a personal triumph viewed as a massive show of confidence halfway into his first term.
Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won a surprise absolute majority in Uttar Pradesh (UP), the country’s most populous state that is home to 220 million people and seen as a key indicator of national politics.
Party leader Amit Shah called the win a “historic mandate” for the BJP and said it would also form governments in the states of Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur.
“These results will set Indian politics in a new direction,” he said at a press conference at the party’s New Delhi headquarters ahead of a formal election commission announcement of the results due later Saturday.
“The faith that people have placed in the BJP and in Narendra Modi will pay off.”
The party won over 300 of the total 403 seats in Uttar Pradesh, way above the figure it needs to form a government on its own.
It also won a majority in Uttarakhand, but the election commission website showed the opposition Congress Party led in Goa and Manipur with just a handful of seats still to be counted.
Shah said the result showed Modi, who personally led the campaign in the key battleground state of UP, was now “the most popular leader since independence”.