New Delhi, May 17 – Barely an hour after the counting for the 2014 General Elections began on Friday, the picture was clear: it was just the countdown for BJP PM nominee Narendra Modi to ascend the high chair. Riding on an immense electoral wave in favour of Modi, the BJP is set for a comfortable majority in the Lok Sabha.
The party-led grand coalition, National Democratic Alliance, is set to win 335 seats while the BJP, by itself, is set to win 282 seats. This is the first coalition to win such a huge number of seats. While it is for the first time in India’s independent history that any single party, other than the Congress, is set to gain the majority on its own.
The Congress, India’s oldest political party which had ruled India for a decade since 2004 at the head of the UPA, appeared set for an unprecedented rout. The UPA had won just 47 seats by 9.30 pm and was leading in additional 14 seats.
The first seat went to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — in Baghpat in Uttar Pradesh where its candidate Satyapal Singh, a former Mumbai Police commissioner, defeated RLD leader and Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh.
Information from the Election Commission indicated a BJP sweep in northern, western and central India, and the party was also making gains in states where it has been traditionally weak.
Must Read: Everything that happened on May 16:
The stock market shot up on news of the imminent BJP victory. In Gujarat and Rajasthan, the party captured all but two seats. It won all the seven seats in Delhi, all four in Himachal Pradesh and four of five in Uttarakhand. In Uttar Pradesh, the party had its best ever performance which was beyond anyone’s guess. It was all set to win 73 out of the 80 seats here.
All BJP stalwarts barring Arun Jaitley were victorious, including prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi in both Vadodara in Gujarat and Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh. So were LK Advani in Gandhinagar, Rajnath Singh in Lucknow and Nitin Gadkari in Nagpur. Jaitley lost to former Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh of the Congress in Amritsar.
Among regional parties, while Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress was set to capture 34 of West Bengal’s 42 seats and Jayalalithaa’s AIADMK was set to win 37 of Tamil Nadu’s 39 seats. Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party was set for a complete rout in Uttar Pradesh where it failed to win any seats. DMK and MNS were also wiped out.
Congress’s worst performance ever:
The Congress had its worst ever performance, set to bag less than one-tenth of the total strength of the House, a constitutional prerequisite for having a main Opposition and its Leader. UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi said that they respected the people’s mandate and claimed responsibility for the debacle.
BJP president Rajnath Singh described the party’s performance as “superb”, and said the trends indicate a landslide. Rajnath Singh said he telephoned Modi and congratulated him. But BJP workers broke into wild celebrations across the country, dancing to the drum beat, bursting firecrackers and distributing sweets to all and sundry.
While Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi won their Sultanpur and Amethi seats, many Congress veterans faced defeat, including Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde (Solapur), Ambika Soni (Anandpur Sahib), Kapil Sibal (Chandni Chowk) and Pawan Kumar Bansal (Chandigarh).
I am Mazdoor No. 1: Modi:
In his first speech after the BJP’s historic win in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, India’s next Prime Minister Narendra Modi thanked the voters and said his government belongs to all and not to one region or one party.
Speaking in Vadodara, Modi said, “I believe in team work. We aim to take everybody along, including our opponents.” He thanked the people for making him win from Vadodara with the highest ever margin and also for giving him the responsibility to lead the country.
“After filing nomination I could give only 50 minutes to Vadodara. But you gave me around 5.7 lakh votes,” he said. Maintaining that the BJP’s resounding victory sounded the death-knell for coalition politics, Modi said, “First time since Independence, a non-Congress government has achieved majority in the Lok Sabha.”
Modi said that nobody had ever doubted his ability to do very hard work. “I’m Mazdoor Number 1. In the coming 60 months, I’ll dedicate every moment of my time to the people.” Hinting perhaps at the fact that his Cabinet will be young, Modi said, “This is the first government in the hands of those born in Independent India.”
Market on fire, India Inc cheers Modi:
Corporate houses and industry associations said on Friday that the Modi-led BJP and its allies have won a decisive victory, enough to give the new government a free hand to formulate industry-friendly strategies and bring the country back on a high growth trajectory.
“The outcome of the general elections reaffirms India’s vibrant and dynamic democracy and would greatly help to revive growth and investor sentiments,” said Ajay Shriram, President, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). “The economic reforms agenda can be taken forward with a stable political dispensation and a multidimensional tool-box of policy instruments is required to kick-start growth.”
The industry is hoping that this gets rectified, and positive sentiments drove the stock markets, taking the Sensex to an all-time intra-day high of 25,000 on Friday. “Congratulations, Shri Modi for your remarkable rise,” tweeted Anand Mahindra, Chairman of the Mahindra Group. “India’s impatience to rise has put you on top. May you fulfill these great expectations.”
Biocon Chairperson Kiran Mazumdar Shaw said that Modi had “outperformed all electoral forecasts, and he will outperform” as India’s 14th Prime Minister. “The country is entering a golden era of change,” she added.
BJP also gains in Muslim areas:
A Reuters analysis of Friday’s sweeping election victory for Modi showed that many Muslim voters appeared to have put aside their fears and backed the BJP. Alongside the sheer scale of Modi’s triumph, the change in attitude among a sizeable proportion of Muslims is one of the most surprising outcomes of a vote where social and economic aspirations appear to have overridden other concerns.
Data provided by the Election Commission showed that in constituencies where the population of Muslims is more than 20 percent, a BJP candidate looked set to win in nearly half. Of the 102 constituencies where, according to polling group CSDS at least one in five voters are Muslims, Election Commission data showed that a BJP candidate had won or was leading the count in 47.
In the 2009 election, the BJP won only 24 of these seats. Modi’s party was even heading for victory on Friday in two seats where more than half of the population is Muslim, and in 18 where more than a third of the voters are Muslims.
Celebrations all across:
As trends started coming in, BJP workers and supporters from across the country plunged into celebrations well before the announcement of results. In Varanasi, party workers started assembling at the central election office in Rathyatra locality to celebrate the occasion and danced to drum beats all day long.
In Delhi, the BJP headquarters was jampacked with visitors and mediapersons. BJP president Rajnath Singh, former BJP chiefs Nitin Gadkari and Venkaiah Naidu and general secretary Amit Shah later addressed a press conference here.
In Vadodara where Modi addressed a rally later in the evening, people were out in the streets celebrating Modi’s historic win. Celebrations were also reported from various parts of the country.
-INDIA TODAY
