Modi’s BJP set for a landslide in state polls in India’s Gujarat | Elections News

India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is heading for a record-breaking landslide victory in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat for a seventh straight term.

The right-wing party is leading in 156 of the 182 seats in the state assembly, according to data released by the election commission on Thursday.

The final results are expected later on Thursday. In the last state legislature elections held in 2017, the BJP won 99 seats.

#ResultsWithNDTV | Gujarat Election trends at 4:53 pm. #ElectionResults pic.twitter.com/9V7x6wiBk5

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Experts say the stunning victory in the western state would bolster the BJP’s popularity ahead of general elections scheduled for the summer of 2024, in which Modi is eyeing a third term as prime minister.

Trends in the two-phase state polls showed the opposition Congress party, which won 77 seats in 2017, is leading in just 17 constituencies of Gujarat.

New entrant the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which runs the government in the national capital of Delhi and in Punjab after wins there earlier this year, is leading in only five seats.

In crucial civic poll results which were declared on Wednesday, the BJP lost control of the municipal corporation in Delhi to the AAP.

Modi and his closest aide, home minister Amit Shah, had campaigned aggressively for the BJP in Gujarat for nearly a month, holding multiple rallies and roadshows.

“Thank you Gujarat. I am overcome with a lot of emotions seeing the phenomenal election results,” Modi tweeted on Thursday. “People blessed politics of development and at the same time expressed a desire that they want this momentum to continue at a greater pace.”

Ajay Gudavarthy, who teaches political science at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, told Al Jazeera the BJP’s comfortable win in Gujarat shows a deeper consolidation of the Hindu vote.

The state saw one of the worst religious violence in independent India’s history in 2002, months after Modi took over as its chief minister.

Rights groups say nearly 2,000 people – most of them Muslims – were killed and dozens of women raped that year following the burning of a passenger train carrying a large number of Hindu pilgrims.

Gudavarthy said “there is now a brazen articulation of Hindu votes for the BJP” across the country.

“Even popular leaders from the opposition are losing once the Hindu card is coming to play. One must concede that the [Hindu] sentiment is very deep,” he said.

‘Safety our only concern’

Muslims, who comprise nearly 10 percent of Gujarat’s 60 million population, face growing hatred and institutionalised discrimination in what is considered India’s most communally polarised state.

Kaleem Siddiqui, a minority rights activist in Gujarat’s main city of Ahmedabad, told Al Jazeera the BJP ran an extensive anti-Muslim campaign to garner votes in the state polls.

“The voting has been done using a communal angle. There is no Muslim representation in politics. We don’t have a voice and the government wants to suppress us further in a polarised environment,” he said.

“The Muslim minorities have accepted the government is not for us. We don’t even have any expectations from the government. Our concern has always been our safety.

“The hatred has been expanded by the BJP in the last five years from the urban to rural areas. We are really worried about this,” he said.

Yagnesh Dave, spokesman for the BJP in Gujarat, said his party has won even in “Muslim areas” where the Congress party used to win.

“People have chosen us. It shows that Muslims are also supporting us,” he told Al Jazeera.

However, he said the party’s election manifesto has promised to create so-called “anti-radicalisation cells” which he said was “to eliminate potential threats and anti-India forces”.

The formation of a task force to scrutinise the curriculum in Muslim schools across the state was also in the manifesto, Dave added.

“The anti-radicalisation task force is being created to check ‘love jihad’ and protect Hindus. There is nothing against Muslims. Even in Muslim areas where Congress used to win, people have chosen us. It shows that Muslims are also supporting us,” he told Al Jazeera.

“Love jihad” refers to an unproven conspiracy theory pushed by the Hindu right to describe an alleged phenomenon in which Muslim men lure Hindu women into marriage to convert them to Islam.

Meanwhile, in the northern state of Himachal Pradesh which also went to polls, the Congress is past the halfway mark by leading in 40 of the 68 seats, while the BJP is leading in 25.

The BJP and its allies control more than a dozen of India’s 29 states.

The Congress is struggling to make a comeback, with its top leader Rahul Gandhi currently holding a Bharat Jodo Yatra (India Unity March), a cross-country walk the party says is aimed at addressing the hatred and divisions in society.

The 3,500km (2,175-mile) march on foot started in the southern state of Tamil Nadu in September and is scheduled to reach Indian-administered Kashmir in February.