Modi claims poll victory, vows ‘inclusive’ future
Published on: Friday, May 24, 2019
NEW DELHI: India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi claimed victory Thursday in the country’s elections, promising an “inclusive” future after his Hindu nationalist party appeared headed for a landslide win.
According to Election Commission data based on votes counted so far, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is on course to win around 300 of 543 elected seats in India’s lower house, surpassing its 2014 victory and crushing the opposition Congress party’s hopes of a comeback.
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“Together we grow. Together we prosper. Together we will build a strong and inclusive India. India wins yet again!,” Modi tweeted after votes counted so far pointed to a BJP landslide.
The BJP has been accused by critics of discriminating against India’s religious minorities, in particular its 170 million-strong Muslim population.
Under Modi, lynchings of Muslims and low-caste Dalits for eating beef and slaughtering and trading in cattle have risen.
Several cities with names rooted in India’s Islamic Mughal past have been renamed, while some school textbooks have been changed to downplay Muslims’ contributions to the country.
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Modi ally and BJP party boss Amit Shah tweeted that the election results, which are yet to be finalised, were a victory “for all of India”.
“This result is India’s verdict against the propaganda, lies, personal attacks and baseless politics of the opposition,” he added.
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“Today’s mandate also shows that people of India have entirely uprooted casteism, nepotism and appeasement to choose nationalism and development.”
As small BJP celebrations began in some places, Indian stocks rose, with the main stock indices, the Sensex and the Nifty gaining more than two percent to break the 40,000 and 12,000 point marks respectively for the first time.
“Time for transformation of India. Time for deep reform. I dream of us as a global superpower in my lifetime,” tweeted India’s richest banker, Uday Kotak, as he congratulated Modi.
Rahul Gandhi of the Congress party, the great-grandson, grandson and son of three past premiers, had on Wednesday dismissed exit polls pointing to a Modi win.
“Don’t get disappointed by the propaganda of fake exit polls,” Gandhi, 48, told the party faithful on Twitter.
Early trends also suggested that Gandhi was in a tight race against against a former Bollywood actress running for the BJP in his constituency, which has been held by his family for generations. A second seat he was contesting in Kerala looked safer.
Modi, by contrast, looked set to romp home in Varanasi—one of India’s holiest cities, where Hindus are cremated on the banks of the Ganges—with almost two-thirds of the votes.
The vast size of India—stretching from the Himalayas to the tropics, taking in polluted megacities, deserts and jungles—made the election a marathon six-week endeavour.
The campaign, thought to have cost more than $7 billion, was awash with insults—Modi was likened to Hitler and a “gutter insect”—as well as fake news in Facebook and WhatsApp’s biggest markets.
Gandhi, 48, tried several lines of attack against Modi, in particular over alleged corruption in a French defence deal and over the desperate plight of farmers and the lacklustre economy.
Unemployment is reported to be at a four-decade high with Asia’s third-biggest economy growing too slowly to create jobs for the million Indians entering the labour market every month.
Modi, a former cadre in the militaristic hardline Hindu group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and chief minister of Gujurat in 2002 when riots killed more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, is also seen as divisive.
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