With the Bharatiya Janata Party set to return to power in four states, including Uttar Pradesh, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said the election results have given a “glimpse” of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, reported NDTV.
Modi said that in 2017, the BJP’s massive victory in Uttar Pradesh had decided the fate of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, which the party won with a huge majority.
“…The same applies now too... the 2024 general election result can be glimpsed in the result of the 2022 UP election,” said Modi.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah credited the BJP’s victory in Uttar Pradesh to the government’s welfare schemes. In a tweet in Hindi, he praised Chief Minister Adityanath’s corruption-free “good governance”.
Adityanath, who won from the Gorakhpur Urban seat, credited the BJP’s victory to Modi and said that voters have “buried politics of caste and religion”, reported PTI.
“The voters have blessed Modi-ji’s policies of development and good governance,” he said, according to an NDTV report.
Adityanath said the results and the BJP’s massive have made it clear that the Opposition’s “misleading” campaign did not work.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said his party accepts the verdict and congratulated the winners. “We will learn from this and keep working for the interests of the people of India,” he wrote on Twitter.
In Punjab, where the Aam Aadmi Party won 92 seats, chief ministerial candidate Bhagwant Mann said that the change in the state will be “visible in a month” and that the party will tackle unemployment on priority.
“You have done your duty, now the responsibility is on my shoulders to deliver for Punjab. The chief minister will work for entire Punjab... not for a party.”
“The voice of the people is the voice of God...” Congress leader Navjot Singh Sidhu wrote on Twitter, as the party won a dismal 18 seats after being unseated from power by the Aam Aadmi Party.
In Uttarkhand, the BJP crossed the majority mark but Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami lost from the Khatima Assembly constituency. Dhami in series of tweets in Hindi credited the party’s victory to Modi amid speculation over continuing as the chief minister.
He said that he had made all efforts to fulfill the responsibility entrusted to him by Modi. “...We have been successful in our endeavor in a short time with the blessings of all of you,” he wrote on Twitter.
Congress leader Harish Rawat took responsibility for the party’s poor showing, reported the Hindustan Times. “We were sure that people would vote for a change,” said Rawat, a former chief minister. “There must have been a gap in our efforts,” he said, according to the report.
N Biren Singh, the chief minister of Manipur, where the BJP retained power by winning 32 seats, said on Twitter that the results were a testament of the people’s faith in Modi’s leadership and “citizen-centric” governance.
Conrad Sangma, president of the National People’s Party, which had won six seats in Manipur and was leading in one on Thursday night, said the outfit’s performance has “increased manifold” compared to the 2017 elections.
“We are delighted that our vote share has further increased indicating that electorates have shown trust in the NPP ideology to protect the political-socio-economic interest of the NE [North East] States,” he wrote on Twitter.
In Goa where the BJP won 20 seats falling just one short of the majority mark, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant said the mandate is for the “double engine” government.
P Chidambaram, who was in charge of the Congress in Goa, said the party lost by a “small margin”, according to NDTV.
Chidambaram said that votes being split among various parties reduced the Congress’s numbers. “BJP won by a little over 33 per cent of votes, remaining votes got divided,” he said, according to NDTV.
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