NEW DELHI: A bolt from the blue struck Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s opponents on Saturday as he single-handedly swept two state polls for his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), including the prized Uttar Pradesh (UP) assembly with a three-fourths majority.

Month-long polls were held in India’s most populous Uttar Pradesh state in seven stages and Mr Modi campaigned tirelessly in all of them, camping for three consecutive days in his parliamentary constituency of Varanasi until the end this week. Elections were also held for the Uttarakhand, Indian Punjab, Goa and Manipur assemblies.

The BJP evicted the Congress from the Himalayan foothill region of Uttarakhand but lost together with its Akali Dal allies in Punjab to India’s oldest party. Congress president Sonia Gandhi was missing from the action, reportedly being treated for a serious ailment in New York. Her son Rahul Gandhi failed to enthuse the voters as she often could. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) came second in Punjab and said it had hoped to do better.

BJP fielded not even one Muslim candidate in Uttar Pradesh; Congress wins East Punjab; Goa, Manipur get hung assemblies

Former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati of the Dalit Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) had tried to upstage her rivals but, coming third, was baffled by the verdict. She said it was unbelievable that the BJP had won in Deoband, which has a 70 per cent Muslim electorate. Ms Mayawati had fielded a hundred Muslim candidates and blamed the verdict, which belied even the exit polls, on alleged rigging of the electronic voting machines (EVMs). On its day, the BJP has also blamed EVMs as a factor in its previous defeats.

Gujarat model

In a replica of Gujarat, Mr Modi did not field even one Muslim in UP, and it is thought to be the first time in the state’s history that the minority community would go without a member on the treasury benches.

BJP president Amit Shah, trusted aide to Mr Modi from their Gujarat days, said the prime minister’s leadership and the mandate would “take the country’s politics in a new direction”. There was speculation if this meant a more aggressive Hindutva, including the promised work on a proposed temple in Ayodhya. Mr Modi said the victory was for all Indians.

“The results are very encouraging for the BJP, we are going to form government in four states — UP, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur,” Mr Shah was quoted as saying. The claim of four states appeared to be an exaggeration.

The Congress heads the tally in Goa and Manipur, which have returned hung assemblies. Mr Shah may have referred to the ‘persuasive art’ that brutally strong central governments profess and practice in India with vulnerable opponents.

As the BJP won 326 of the 403 Uttar Pradesh seats, there was an alternative explanation to Ms Mayawati’s charge of rigging. It was suggested that Muslims had voted substantially if not heavily for the BJP, surprising both Ms Mayawati and the state’s ruling Samajwadi Party (in coalition with the Congress), and denying them the required votes.

Muslims constitute 19pc of UP’s population as the single largest block after the Dalits.

In Kanpur, academic A.K. Varma from the Centre for the Study of Society and Politics said: “This kind of mandate is not possible without the votes from Muslims.”

According to the News18 TV channel, he said that while conducting surveys for his think tank in UP, he saw Muslim women showing support for the BJP. “It was a surprise for us to note that Muslim girls were vocal about their support to BJP and that was because of the triple-talaq issue. The party wants to ban that practice and it has wor­ked for the party in some way.”

The clear win in two important state assemblies is expected to give the BJP the MPs it needs in the Rajya Sabha in order to gain the majority in the upper house.

The verdict, however, fell short of Mr Modi’s exhortations to rid the country of the Congress party. In fact, if the Congress does convert its clear leads in Goa and Manipur into majority, it would have won three states against the BJP’s two.

Published in Dawn, March 12th, 2017