Bharatiya Janata Party leader Narendra Modi. Right: BJP senior leader L K Advani addresses party supporters outside the BJP headquarter in New Delhi yesterday.

Reuters/New Delhi

Bharatiya Janata Party leader Narendra Modi yesterday said he would work for the good of all Indians in his maiden address as the country’s prime minister-elect, hours after his opposition party scored a resounding general election win.

The dramatic victory by Modi and his BJP was the first time a single party has won a majority in India’s parliament for three decades.

Yet Modi is a polarising figure, who supporters say will revive the country’s slowing economy but critics believe has Hindu supremacist views that could alienate minorities including the sizeable Muslim community.

Celebratory fire crackers were set off across broad swathes of the country, from the financial capital Mumbai to Modi’s home state of Gujarat.

Thousands of people dressed in saffron orange, the party’s official colour, packed into the main square of Vadodara, Modi’s constituency.

A music troupe sang patriotic songs as people filled the streets and waved orange scarves from rooftops.

“I want to tell my fellow Indians that in letter and spirit I will take all Indians with me,” the usually stern Modi said, flashing broad smiles throughout his address and wearing a checked beige and white tunic. “This is our aim, and I will not leave any stone unturned.”

His comments appeared to be aimed at quelling concerns among Muslims that he would be biased against them. Many Muslims still mistrust Modi due to an outbreak of religious violence on his watch as chief minister of Gujarat in 2002 that left at least 1,000 people dead. He has not fully explained why he was unable to stop the violence, although a Supreme Court inquiry found no evidence to prosecute him.

Some Muslims seem to have put the past behind them, however, with the BJP set to win in half of the constituencies that are home to large Muslim minorities.

The BJP had won or was leading in 282 seats in India’s lower house of parliament, over the 272-seat mark needed for a majority, election commission data at 1630GMT showed.

An alliance led by the party was ahead in 339 seats, television channel NDTV said.

Modi also struck a conciliatory tone toward political rivals, and said he would work with opposition parties. The BJP will not need allies to form a government, but it will have to call on outside support to pass laws in the upper house, where it only has around one fifth of seats.

“The election period is over and it is time to put the heat and dust behind,” Modi said yesterday. “I hope I will get the support of everyone, including my opponents.”

On the leafy main road outside the BJP’s national office in New Delhi, drummers in leopard-print robes, circus performers on stilts and painted elephants performed for hundreds of cheering and dancing revelers. Rows of fire crackers were set off and coloured powder filled the air. Celebrations also took place in Mumbai, where BJP flags were mounted on toy aeroplanes, and in Gujarat’s state capital Gandhinagar, where crowds swarmed around Modi’s car after he visited his mother’s house in a working class neighbourhood.

“Modi is a great personality. Once you hear him speak, you are drawn to him,” said Surendra Tadi, a 34-year-old electrical engineer who had left his home in Noida, a satellite city of Delhi, at 6.30am to travel to the party’s headquarters.

Tadi wore a t-shirt bearing a large picture of Modi and the slogan “I Modified India.”

The frenetic crowd around him consisted mostly of young men in Modi masks and hats. The BJP shindigs were in sharp contrast to the scene at the Congress office in New Delhi, which was so deserted that birds could be heard chirping.

 

DELHI

The BJP wrested all seven Lok Sabha seats in the national capital from the Congress, defeating its nearest rival, the AAP, by a margin of over one lakh votes in each of them. The Congress finished third. The difference in votes between the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Aam Aadmi Party ranged from 106,802 in northwest Delhi to 268,586 in west Delhi. For the BJP, the maximum of 651,395 votes was netted by Parvesh Sahib Singh Verma, son of late former Delhi chief minister Sahib Singh Verma, in west Delhi. He defeated AAP’s Jarnail Singh who polled 382,809 votes and Congress’ Mahabal Mishra. BJP’s Delhi unit president Harsh Vardhan, who contested from Chandni Chowk, got the least number of votes among seven BJP candidates: 436,468. But he defeated AAP’s former journalist-turned-politician Ashutosh by over 1.35 lakh votes as well as Law and Communications Minister Kapil Sibal, who had won twice from Chandni Chowk but now ended up in the third position. Congress candidate Ajay Maken finished third in New Delhi where BJP’s Meenakshi Lekhi won, polling 453,350 votes. Aam Aadmi Party’s Ashish Khetan came second, receiving 290,642 votes. The New Delhi seat also witnessed the lowest margin between the AAP and Congress at 107,749 votes. Maken secured 182,893 votes. AAP’s Rakhi Birla, who was a minister in the 49-day AAP government in Delhi, also lost to BJP’s Udit Raj in northwest Delhi by a margin of over one lakh votes with Krishna Tirath of Congress coming in third with 157,968 votes. The story was similar in south Delhi where BJP’s Ramesh Bidhuri won by a margin of over a lakh votes followed by AAP’s Devinder Sehrawat who got 390,980 votes while Congress again finished last with its candidate Ramesh Kumar polling 125,213 votes.

WEST BENGAL

West Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress put up a spectacular show, sweeping the Lok Sabha polls in the state to emerge as the fourth-largest party in the new Lok Sabha. Of the state’s 42 seats, the Trinamool picked up 34. The Congress won four seats, while the BJP and the Left front spearhead Communist Party of India-Marxist collected two each. Bollywood singer and BJP candidate Babul Supriyo came up with a surprise win in Asansol while his party colleague S S Ahluwalia humbled former Indian soccer captain Bhaichung Bhutia of Trinamool in Darjeeling. Trinamool nominee and actress Moon Moon Sen, a political greenhorn, pulled off a major upset by defeating nine-time MP and CPI-M leader in the outgoing Lok Sabha Basudeb Acharia in Bankura. Of the three union ministers in the state, Adhir Ranjan Chwodhury - also the state Congress chief - won by a thumping margin of over 3.56 lakh vote in Baharampur over singer-cum-Trinamool rival Indranil Sen, while Abu Hasem Khan Chowdhury triumphed in Maldah South. However, the other union minister Deepa Dasmunsi lost out in Raiganj to CPI-M central committee member Mohamed Salim. Besides Salim, the other CPI-M winner was Bodruddoza Khan from Murshidabad. Among the victorious Trinamool candidates are former railways minister Dinesh Trivedi (Barrackpore), party supremo Mamata Banerjee’s nephew Abhishek Banerjee (Diamond Harbour), state party chief Subrata Bakshi (Kolkata South), former union minister Sudip Bandyopadhyay (Kolkata North), Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s grand nephew Sugata Bose (Jadavpur), and former union ministers Sougata Roy (Dum Dum), Sultan Ahmed (Uluberia) and C M Jatua (Mathurapur).

Maharashtra

The BJP-Shiv Sena alliance was yesterday poised to bag around 42 of Maharashtra’s 48 Lok Sabha seats, giving an unprecedented jolt to the state’s ruling Congress-Nationalist Congress Party alliance. While the Congress was relegated to just two wins in the evening, the NCP managed four wins, with one still awaiting the final tally as counting continued. The Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena tally includes the country’s commercial capital where the Congress-NCP alliance has been wiped out. Some of its big winning names include former party chief Nitin Gadkari from Nagpur and deputy opposition leader in outgoing Lok Sabha Gopinath Munde from Beed. The Congress-NCP rout has been virtually replicated in all the regions of the state where the BJP-SS alliance has crushed union ministers, state ministers, film stars and veteran politicians. In Mumbai north-central and Nandurbar, political greenhorns and youthful candidates like Poonam Mahajan and Heena Gavit have come out as giant-killers of Priya Dutt and Manikrao Gavit respectively. The prominent ministers from the Congress-NCP who lost include Praful Patel (NCP -Bhandara-Gondiya), Sushilkumar Shinde (Congress - Solapur), Manikrao Gavit (Congress -Nandurbar), Milind Deora (Congress - Mumbai south), and Pratik Patil (Congress - Sangli). Maharashtra ministers who lost include Public Works and Tourism Minister Chhagan Bhujbal (NCP - Nashik), Water Resources Minister Sunil Tatkare (NCP - Raigad), Social Justice Minister Shivajirao Moghe (Congress - Yavatmal-Washim), Environment and Cultural Affairs Minister Sanjay Deotale (Congress -Chandrapur) and Minister of State for Relief and Reabilitation Suresh Dhas (NCP - Beed).

TAMIL NADU

Tamil Nadu’s ruling AIADMK (All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam) rode on a Jayalalithaa wave to gobble up 37 of the state’s 39 Lok Sabha seats to become one of the largest parties in the Lok Sabha. The wave was such that there will be no Congress or DMK (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam) representative from the state in the Lok Sabha for the next five years as things stand now. Many of the prominent candidates of these two parties as well as from others crashed to defeat. They included DMK’s A Raja, Dayanidhi Maran, T K S Elangovan, T R  Baalu and Congress’ Karti P Chidambaram, son of union Finance Minister P Chidambaram, E V K S Elangovan and others. Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s (MDMK) candidates including its leader Vaiko, candidates from the two communist parties and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) also lost. However Pattali Makkal Katchi’s (PMK) Anbumani Ramadoss contesting from Dharmapuri and Bharatiya Janata Party’s Pon Radhakrishan from Kanyakumari were the two victorious survivors. Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, who is also the AIADMK supremo, told reporters: “It is a historic, unparalleled, unprecedented victory without any alliance. I would like to thank all those who worked for the victory.” She also conveyed her best wishes to the BJP’s Narendra Modi, who is set to become the next prime minister, and said her party would act as a responsible political party. “We are the third largest party and we will act as a responsible political party,” she said, adding she hoped that the new government at the centre would be friendly towards Tamil Nadu. AIADMK leader C Ponnaiyan said the results “are as per our expectations”. “In fact, we were sure of winning all the 39 seats.”

KERALA

In face of a national electoral rout, Kerala appears to have offered a beacon of solace for the ravaged Congress. The Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) has managed to secure 12 seats out of the 20 on offer in the state, while the remaining went to its traditional rival, the Left Democratic Front (LDF). UDF’s tally of 12 seats this time round was divided among the Congress (eight), Indian Union Muslim League (two), Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) and Kerala Congress (Mani) one each. On the other hand, the LDF not only retained their four seats but also added four more. The division was Communist Party of India-Marxist (five), Communist Party of India (one) and two Independents backed by them. The intense poll battle saw some very close contests, but the main one was witnessed in the state capital where sitting MP and union minister Shashi Tharoor took on 80-year-old Bharatiya Janata Party veteran O Rajagopal. Rajagopal led the race until 85% of the votes were counted, before Tharoor beat him to the post winning with a slender margin of 15,470 votes. A defeat which shook the Congress is that of sitting member K Sudhakaran from the Kannur constituency. He was edged out by CPI-M central committee member P K Sreemathi by a margin of 6,566 votes. At Vadakara, Congress candidate and union minister Mullapally Ramachandran scraped through with a margin of just 3,306 votes. Minister of State for External Affairs E Ahamed of the IUML, defeated P K Sainaba of the CPI-M by 194,739 votes. Another shocking defeat in terms of the margin of votes came in Palakkad when youth CPI-M sitting member M B Rajesh knocked out media baron and Socialist Janata Democratic (UDF constituent) supremo M P Veerendra Kumar by a margin of 105,300 votes.

BIHAR

Thanks to the wave in favour of Narendra Modi, the BJP-led NDA (National Democratic Alliance) yesterday crushed Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s JD-U (Janata Dal-United) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal-Congress combine by winning 31 of the state’s 40 seats. The Congress-Rashtriya Janata Dal combine in the state won seven seats and the ruling Janata Dal-United won only two. RJD chief Lalu Prasad’s wife and former chief minister Rabri Devi was defeated by BJP candidate and former union minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy in Saran by 44,000 votes, while their daughter Misa Bharti was defeated in Pataliputra by BJP’s Ram Kirpal Yadav by 42,000 votes. RJD candidate Pappu Yadav defeated JD-U president Sharad Yadav in Madhepura. Congress leader Mohamed Asrarul Haque won from Muslim-majority Kishanganj. Pappu Yadav’s wife Ranjeet Ranjan of the Congress won from Supaul. Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) chief Ram Vilas Paswan won from his traditional Hajipur seat, while his actor-turned-politician son Chirag Paswan won from Jamui. Lok Sabha speaker and Congress candidate Meira Kumar was defeated in Sasaram, while former Kerala governor and Congress candidate Nikhil Kumar also lost in Aurangabad. They were defeated by BJP candidates Chedi Paswan and Sushil Kumar Singh respectively. Actor-turned-politician and BJP sitting MP from Patna Sahib Shatrughan Sinha won by over one lakh votes over Congress candidate Kunal Singh. Former union minister and BJP candidate Shahnawaz Hussain was defeated in Bhagalpur. JD-U’s Kaushlendra Kumar managed to retain Nalanda, the home turf of Nitish Kumar, while party candidate Santosh Kushwaha won from Purnea by defeated BJP sitting MP Uday Singh.

 

KARNATAKA

An upbeat BJP yesterday retained its hold in Karnataka, winning 17 of the state’s 28 Lok Sabha seats riding on the popularity of its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi. Though the party won two seats less than it had in the 2009 general election, it continued to hold sway over Bangalore by retaining all the three seats in the city in the southern, central and northern suburbs. The Bharatiya Janata Party also bounced back after losing the state legislative assembly elections a year ago to the Congress, which managed to secure only nine seats - three more than it won in 2009. The Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) got the remaining two seats. Former prime minister and JD-S chief H D Deve Goweda won from Hassan for a record sixth time. Prominent BJP winners are five-time MP Ananth Kumar who defeated Infosys co-founder and technocrat Nandan Niekani in the high profile Bangalore South constituency, former chief ministers B S Yeddyurappa and D V Sadananda Gowda from Shimoga and Bangalore north respectively. Nilekani lost by 229,020 votes. BJP’s P C Mohan (557,130 votes) won from the Bangalore central seat against Congress’ Rizwan Arshad (419,630). Former Infosys honcho and the Aam Admi Party candidate V Balakrishna came third (39,869). Among prominent winners from the Congress are central ministers Mallikarjun Kharge from Gulbarga (SC) seat, M Veerappa Moily from Chikkballapur and K H A Muniyappa from Kolar (SC). Nilekani told reporters: “I am grateful to the voters who voted for me, for their faith in me. To those who did not vote for me, I regret I was unable to win their support in the election.” Asserting that he led a hard fought campaign, Nilekani said as Bangalore would remain his priority, he would continue to work for its people

 

RAJASTHAN

The BJP yesterday made a clean sweep in Rajasthan by winning all the 25 Lok Sabha seats from the desert state. The Congress, on the other hand, recorded its worst defeat in the state’s history. The Congress won 20 seats in 2009 and the party’s lowest tally was one in the post-Emergency 1977 elections. Prominent Congress leaders who lost included union ministers Sachin Pilot (Ajmer), Girja Vyas (Chittorgarh), Bhanwar Jitendra Singh (Alwar) and Chandresh Kumari (Jodhpur), and party leaders Namonarain Meena (Dausa) and former India cricket captain Mohamed Azharuddin (Tonk-Sawai Madhopur). Prominent BJP leaders who won included sitting MP from Bikaner, Arjun Ram Meghwal, and Dushyant Singh, son of Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, from Jhalwar-Baran constituency. The biggest win was by Ramcharan Bohra of the BJP who defeated Mahesh Joshi of the Congress by over 5.36 lakh votes in Jaipur. “We accept the people’s mandate. I accept defeat and take responsibility for the election results. We never expected this kind of results... look at the results... the big margins our candidates have lost. It is time for introspection,” state Congress president Sachin Pilot said. “No one expected this kind of result,” said political analyst Ravi Goswami. “It seems anti-incumbency against the centre, and the Narendra Modi wave contributed to the defeat of the Congress in the state,” he said. Chief Minister and BJP leader Vasundhara Raje said: “We were working on a mission 25... we are happy to achieve it. This win is of the public, the people. This win is the result of the hard work of the BJP workers. I thank them all for the big win.”

Kerry offers congratulations

US Secretary of State John Kerry yesterday congratulated Narendra Modi after he led his Bharatiya Janata Party to a landslide election victory. “Congrats to @narendramodi and BJP,” Kerry tweeted. “Look forward to working w/you/growing shared prosperity/security w/world’s largest democracy.” On Monday, US President Barack Obama pledged to work closely with the next government in New Delhi — but did not mention the BJP or Modi. The US had for years refused to deal with Modi over allegations that he failed to swiftly curb deadly 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat that left at least 1,000 people dead shortly after he came to power as chief minister. Washington ended its boycott of Modi in February when Nancy Powell, the outgoing US ambassador to India, shook hands with him at the start of closed-door talks. In 2005, the US refused Modi a visa under a domestic law that bars entry to any foreign official seen as responsible for severe violations of religious freedom.