Prime Minister Narendra Modi is greeted by Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah as he arrives at the party headquarters to attend the BJP Parliamentary Board meeting in New Delhi.
Agencies/New Delhi
The Bharatiya Janata Party’s big gains in Maharashtra and Haryana are likely to encourage Prime Minister Narendra Modi to step up the pace of economic reforms.
State elections determine seat shares in the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of parliament, where the BJP and its allies lack a majority. The BJP hopes for gains in a clutch of state polls between now and 2017 to get towards the majority it needs to pass most legislation without help from the opposition.
The 64-year-old Modi, a gifted stump orator, hit the campaign trail hard. He will be able to reap capital from the victories even though the BJP did not achieve its ambition of winning enough seats to rule Maharashtra alone.
“There is still a Modi wave that is like a tsunami,” BJP president and Modi campaign manager Amit Shah told reporters after most of the seats had been declared.
“Today’s results give a seal of approval to the Modi government over the past four months, and prove that our countryfolk recognise Modi as an undisputed leader of India.”
Both states, which voted on Wednesday, were formerly bastions of the Congress Party that has long dominated Indian politics. As in the general election, Congress was decimated, and risks sliding into oblivion under mother-son duo Sonia and Rahul Gandhi.
“Today is likely to be both a BJP win and a funeral of a 150-year-old party,” said investment manager and columnist Surjit Bhalla, referring to the organisation founded in 1885 and led by the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty for four generations.
Modi has already seized on exit polls giving the BJP a clear lead to shake up his economic team, replacing the top civil servant at the finance ministry and hiring US-based economist Arvind Subramanian as his chief economic adviser.
His government on Saturday scrapped diesel price controls and raised the cost of natural gas, giving market forces greater sway as it seeks to attract energy investment, boost competition and cut subsidy costs.
Senior government officials say Modi may soon beef up the cabinet he formed at the end of May to ease pressure on heavyweights like Arun Jaitley, who holds both the finance and defence portfolios.
Jaitley, recovering from a stomach operation, has his work cut out drafting an annual budget to encourage business investment and revive Asia’s third largest economy from a prolonged slowdown by February.
Political analyst Samir Saran said the victories “allow greater space to Modi to accelerate his reforms agenda.”
“In many ways the results signify the continuing rejection of the brand of politics on offer from the Congress and its allies at the centre and in the states,” Saran, senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation think-tank, said.
“It also is confirmation of Narendra Modi as ‘the’ leader with momentum.”
The BJP was seen as benefiting from anger and fatigue towards Congress, defeated in May on voter concern over corruption, rising inflation and an economy suffering its worst slump in years.
