Modi’s ruling BJP voted out in key Indian state

India’s opposition Congress party won power in a key state yesterday, partial election results showed, defeating Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling BJP a year ahead of national polls.It ousted Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from office in Karnataka, the only southern state controlled by the Hindu nationalist grouping.Karnataka has a population of well over 60mn people – about the same as Britain – and its capital Bengaluru is India’s tech hub.With dozens of results still to come in, Congress had already won 114 places in the 224-seat assembly, enough for an overall majority, and was leading in another 22, which would give it a comfortable cushion, the election commission website showed.BJP state leader B S Yediyurappa – a former chief minister – conceded defeat."Victory and defeat aren’t new to BJP,” he told reporters. "We will introspect about the party’s setback. I respectfully accept this verdict.”The election is the first of five crucial state polls this year that are seen as setting the tone for parliamentary elections due in April and May 2024.It is also the first big electoral face-off between the BJP and Congress since Congress leader Rahul Gandhi was convicted of defamation in March and lost his parliament seat.The party had mounted a major campaign in the state with Modi himself visiting to promote its muscular brand of Hindu politics.Modi is widely expected to stand again in the 2024 general election.Congress campaigned hard on secularism, giveaways of electricity and rice for the poor, and accusations of BJP corruption.Ecstatic Congress members burst firecrackers, danced to the beat of drums and distributed sweets at the party headquarters in New Delhi and in Bengaluru."(The) Congress party stood with the poor in Karnataka, we fought on the issues of the poor,” Gandhi told reporters."I feel happiest about the fact that we didn’t fight this fight with hate or wrong words. We fought this fight with love, with an open heart, and the people of Karnataka showed that this country likes love,” he said. "The markets of hate have been shut in Karnataka, the shops of love have opened.”However, analysts say the Karnataka result has limited implications for next year’s poll, at which the BJP is widely expected to secure a third consecutive victory."This election has exposed the limits of Modi’s popularity,” said Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, political commentator and author of the book Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times."It shows the BJP’s attempts to polarise the voters somehow or the other has not worked and that there are limits to the politics of Hindutva,” he told AFP.The win would "enhance Congress party’s position within the gamut of opposition parties”, he said, but would not affect the overall result in 2024.Congress, the party of India’s Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, dominated the country’s politics for decades but has been in decline for years, and the victory in Karnataka will raise the number of states it controls to just four.The BJP fell short of a majority in the last state election in Karnataka in 2018, but it assumed power a year later allegedly by persuading members of the ruling coalition to defect.