India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) has won control of the country’s most populous and influential state by an unexpectedly large margin, cementing Narendra Modi’s dominance of Indian politics and putting the prime minister on track for re-election in 2019. Final results released by the Indian election commission on Saturday showed the BJP had won 311 of 403 seats in Uttar Pradesh, enough to form a rare majority government in the north Indian state of 220 million people. Its chief rival, a coalition between the Congress and the incumbent Samajwadi party, had won just 54 seats and was leading in one more. Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) Every moment of our time, everything we do is for welfare & wellbeing of the people of India. The party struggled to win any seats in Goa and, late on Saturday, falling well short of Congress’s total in Punjab.

Source: The Guardian March 12, 2017 03:56 UTC