Modi's BJP suffers heavy election defeats in Hindi heartland

Congress wins in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh and leads in Madhya Pradesh six months before national vote

Michael Safi in Mandsaur
Tue 11 Dec 2018 15.55 GMT

The party of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi has suffered heavy election defeats in two states, with another on a knife edge, in a bruising day of results that exposed the party’s vulnerability less than six months before the country goes to the polls.

The main opposition Congress party decisively won state elections in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh and has a narrow lead in Madhya Pradesh, where votes were still being counted on Tuesday evening.

The governing Bharatiya Janata party’s (BJP) vote collapsed by 17 percentage points in Rajasthan state and by at least 12 points in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, all part of the Hindi heartland where Indian governments are traditionally made or broken.

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“I think election 2019 is going to be a fight for Modi,” said Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, a political commentator and biographer of the prime minister. “These losses came not just in the Hindi heartland, but in the heart of the Hindi heartland.”

He said the results — from elections held in the past week but formally counted on Tuesday — were a reflection of the poor performances of the incumbent state governments, but also a backlash against Modi’s administration for “failing to deliver on its promises”.

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