NEW DELHI (AP) — Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist party was set to lose Karnataka, the only southern Indian state it governs, according to an early vote count Saturday that showed the Congress party in opposition was leading the crucial state polls.
With counting of votes underway, the Election Commission of India said the Congress was leading in 127 of the 224 state assembly seats. Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party was leading in 62 constituencies, while another regional party, the Janata Dal (Secular), was ahead in 22 seats.
Karnataka, one of India’s richest states, voted on Wednesday and full results are expected later on Saturday. A party needs 113 seats to achieve a simple majority.
The results are expected to give a big boost to opposition parties who are bidding to form a united front to challenge Modi in next year’s general election. It will also help the prospects of the Congress party, which was defeated by the BJP in the last two national polls and is struggling to regain its political prominence across the country.
Modi’s party, which was betting on the prime minister’s popularity, wants to retain the only southern state it has ever controlled, where its strident Hindu nationalist politics have met with a relatively slower reception than the rest of the country. Modi had been campaigning aggressively in Karnataka, home to 65 million people, for the past few weeks, criss-crossing the state putting on big shows.
Karnataka is the second state that Modi’s party has lost to the Congress in the last six months. In December, the Congress ousted the BJP in northern Himachal Pradesh, a small Himalayan state.
Congress party workers celebrated the results with its spokesperson Radhika Khera describing the expected victory as a “resounding response to Modi’s divisive politics”.
Over the past two years, Modi’s party had sought to maximize gains in Karnataka, where communal polarization between majority Hindus and minority Muslims has deepened after BJP leaders and supporters banned girls from wearing the scarf as part of their school uniform. According to the 2011 census, India’s most recent, 84% of Karnataka’s population was Hindu, nearly 13% Muslim, and less than 2% Christian.
Initially, Modi’s party promised to spur development and wooed voters with social welfare measures. However, ahead of the polls, he veered into Hindu nationalism, his usual campaign playbook, and accused the Congress of disregarding Hindu values and appeasing minority groups, especially Muslims .
The Congress built its campaign by targeting Modi’s party on rising inflation, allegations of corruption and poor infrastructure development in the state, while promising electricity subsidies, rations to poor families and financial assistance to unemployed graduates.
The polls were also seen as another showdown between Modi and Rahul Gandhi, the scion of the dynastic Congress party leadership who was convicted of making defamatory comments about the prime minister’s surname during an election rally in 2019. It sparked the ‘expulsion of Gandhi from Parliament. in March and risks losing his eligibility to stand for election for the next eight years if a court does not overturn his conviction.
Late last year, Gandhi undertook a 3,500-kilometer (2,185-mile) walking tour of Indian cities, towns and villages to rejuvenate the party and win popular support.
The Karnataka election is the first of five crucial state polls this year. They are seen as a gauge of voter sentiment ahead of national elections next year, in which Modi will seek to extend his prime ministership to a third consecutive term.
___
There is more AP coverage of the Asia-Pacific region
