Assembly Election Result 2022: The international media, which closely followed the crucial assembly elections in India, on Thursday (March 10) commented that the BJP's record electoral gains in Uttar Pradesh and elsewhere once again reinforces the dominance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Indian politics for the foreseeable future.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won assembly polls in the four states - Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur ruled by it, sweeping away opposition parties with its governance model mounted on pillars of welfarism, Hindutva and Modi's unflagging popularity.
With its thumping victory in Uttar Pradesh, the BJP showed it retains the popular support to overcome criticism of its stewardship of the economy, which has stalled amid soaring unemployment and inflation, and of its response to Covid-19, which devastated the state, the Washington Post reported.
Now, these results make Modi’s BJP the favourite to win the next national election in 2024, the paper commented.
How foreign media reacted to BJP's thumping win in Assembly elections.
The BJP’s win in Uttar Pradesh, experts say, once again reinforces the dominance of the 71-year-old Modi in the country of more than 1.3 billion people for the foreseeable future, the paper said.
The party's victory will also "cement its position in national politics and offer a ringing endorsement of Modi’s vision to guide India toward becoming a Hindu country and away from its secular founding principles," the Post said.
While Modi’s party has sometimes struggled against strong regional parties in state and general elections, consolidating any of them into a proper opposition to challenge his grip on India would not be easy or quick. And Congress, the largest opposition party with a national presence, has appeared increasingly vulnerable, The New York Times said.
Much of the attention during the election season has been focused on the prize state of Uttar Pradesh, not just because of its size but because of how consequential it could be to the future of Indian politics, it said.
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London-based Daily Telegraph said that the assembly election is expected to be a barometer for the national political mood amid deepening sectarian divisions.
Holding onto Uttar Pradesh, India’s most politically important state, would boost Modi's hopes of winning a third straight term office in the 2024 general election and bolster his image as the country’s most popular politician in decades, the British newspaper said.
The Independent newspaper said that the BJP has been under immense pressure to steer an economy that was sputtering even before the COVID-19 pandemic, with unemployment being a key issue among voters.
The BBC reported that the day clearly belongs to the two men who created history in their respective states - incumbent Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath and future Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann.
In Uttar Pradesh, Adityanath led the BJP to victory for a second straight term, breaking a jinx of more than a quarter century.
Mann’s popularity with voters helped his party soar to a convincing win in Punjab - the first state outside Delhi where AAP will form a government. The victory will boost AAP’s national ambitions and encourage it to expand its presence in other states, the BBC noted.
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