"It hit the people like fire," said Awadhesh Prasad of the opposition Samajwadi Party (SP), whose base comprises Muslim and lower-caste voters in Uttar Pradesh. "The prime minister and other leaders tried to explain to the people, but by then their mood was set," said Dileep Patel, a state BJP official in Varanasi. The message was echoed in media advertisements and by the regional party's workers in Uttar Pradesh, which a SP spokesperson described as 600,000 strong. In power, Modi successively backed a man from a lower caste and a woman from a tribal group for India's largely symbolic presidency. It won eight of the 17 reserved seats in Uttar Pradesh, compared to 14 the last time.
