JAIPUR: India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has retained control of the country’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, in a vote seen as a key test of support for Prime Minister Narendra Modi ahead of national elections in 2024.

More than 180 million votes were cast in five Indian states — Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Manipur and Goa — during polling over the past month.

Uttar Pradesh is home to more than 220 million people, about a fifth of India’s population. Winning the state is considered crucial to securing a parliamentary majority, as it sends the most legislators to the country’s supreme legislative body.

Tight races in Manipur, Goa and Uttarakhand have ended in favor of the BJP, while the Aam Aadmi Party, which also governs the national capital territory of Delhi, is headed for a major victory in Punjab.

After initial results for Uttar Pradesh were released on Thursday, BJP spokesperson Sudesh Verma said in a statement: “But for Punjab, the BJP has achieved astounding victories in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur. These victories will rewrite India’s political road map.”  

Rahul Gandhi, leader of India’s main opposition Congress party, which is trailing in all five states, took to Twitter to say he accepted the result of the popular vote.

“Humbly accept the people’s verdict. Best wishes to those who have won the mandate,” he said.

The Hindu nationalist BJP has been in power in Uttar Pradesh since 2017 when it won 312 seats of the 384 it contested. 

The 2022 win, achieved despite criticism over the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and mass anti-government protests by farmers last year, will make incumbent Yogi Adityanath, a controversial Hindu monk, the first Uttar Pradesh chief minister to complete a full term and return to office. 

It was not certain if farmers, an influential voting bloc, would support the ruling party after proposed laws to privatize the agriculture sector triggered a year-long protest that ended with the government dropping the plan in November.

The BJP pinned its hopes on a slew of development schemes carried out by local governments.

New Delhi-based writer and analyst Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay told Arab News the win was an “endorsement of the BJP’s welfare politics that included distributing rations among the poorer sections of the society.”

He said that the party is also likely to consolidate the populist politics it has been introducing in the Hindu-dominated country since Modi rose to power in 2014.

“The results show the normalization of the BJP’s majoritarian narrative that it has introduced in India’s polity in the past eight years.”