New Delhi: In a resounding endorsement of PM Narendra Modi’s policies and his party’s “double-engine” electoral plank, four of five states that went to polls returned the BJP to power Thursday.
With the BJP set to form governments again in UP, Uttarakhand, Goa, and Manipur, PM Modi said: “A hill state adjacent to the border, a coastal state, a state with special blessings of Mother Ganga and a state on the northeastern border, the BJP has received blessings from all four directions.”
Elated over the BJP’s 4/5 score, Modi, addressing party workers in New Delhi, said he hoped “political pundits, who did not think much of the party’s 2019 (Lok Sabha) win saying it had already been decided by the 2017 UP results, will now have the courage to say that the 2022 (UP) results have decided the 2024 (Lok Sabha) results.”
“The challenges of these states are different, the path of their development journey is different, but what is common, weaving them in the same thread, is the trust in BJP, in the BJP’s policies, intentions, and decisions,” he said.
If the verdict was a stamp of approval for the BJP in elections considered a test for the Lok Sabha polls still two years away, it had the Congress flailing again, the party stock sliding further despite a high-octane campaign by Gandhi siblings Priyanka and Rahul. Voted out of Punjab, it was leading only on two seats in UP where its vote share had dropped to a little over two percent.
For the BJP, the taste of victory was sweeter in UP where Yogi Adityanath broke the comeback jinx of almost four decades. Not only did he stave off the challenge from the Akhilesh Yadav-led SP, but eclipsed all others in the fray, reducing the Congress, BSP, and Others to single digits.
