Supporters of Bharatiya Janata Party celebrate as they burn crackers outside the BJP office in Mumbai. Photograph: Reuters
It’s a saffron sweep in Haryana with the BJP set to form government in a state where it won just four seats five years ago in the 2009 Assembly elections. In Maharashtra, the Modi wave has catapulted the party to an emphatic lead in nearly 130 seats in the 288-member Assembly.
Early trends from the counting of votes for the Assembly elections in two states, held on October 15, showed the BJP leading in at least 50 seats in 90-member Haryana Assembly, with the ruling Congress reduced to 14 and the INLD leading at 16 seats.
“People of Haryana and Maharashtra have given us more than we expected. It is a huge victory,” the BJP’s spokesperson Shahnawaz Hussain said.
The counting of votes began at 8 am in what is likely to be a Super Sunday for the BJP with most exit polls predicting the party to emerge as the single largest party in the two states, ruled by Congress and its allies for years.
The elections, held earlier this week on October 15, are the first major test of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity after the BJP’s landslide victory in Lok Sabha polls five months ago. The party dumped its allies in both states and is fighting them solo.
The two states also registered impressive voter turnout in the October 15 polls. Haryana recorded its highest-ever turnout at 76.54 per cent while Maharashtra recorded 63.13 per cent voting.
The India Today Group-Cicero exit poll conducted earlier this week predicted that the BJP is expected to win 124 of the 288 seats in Maharashtra, which is short of a simple majority. In 2009, the Congress won 82, the NCP 62 while the BJP won 46 and the Shiv Sena 44..
Though the exit poll didn’t include Haryana, other pollsters predicted the BJP winning 37-54 seats in the state. In the outgoing Haryana Assembly, the Congress had 40 seats, the BJP had only 4, the INLD 31 and the HJC 6. Others had 9 seats.
In Maharashtra, the projections are being keenly watched following the break-up of both the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance and the Congress-NCP tie-up. If the BJP scores below the projections, it will be looking for post-poll allies by either trying the NCP as a new ally or recement broken ties with the Shiv Sena.
The 25-year-old alliance between the BJP and the Shiv Sena saw an acrimonious split last month after weeks of intense parleys over sharing of seats. The Maharashtra-NCP tie-up broke soon afterwards, making Maharashtra a free-for-all contest.
A total of 4,119 candidates contested the polls in Maharashtra. Of the 288 constituencies, including 36 constituencies in Mumbai, 234 are general, 29 reserved for scheduled castes and 25 for scheduled tribes.
In Haryana, a total of 1351 candidates, including 116 women – the highest number since the formation of the state in 1966 – contested the elections.
