NEW DELHI: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling party won power in remote northeast Assam and made gains in other states on Thursday, expanding its political influence beyond its traditional heartland two years after a landslide national election victory.
The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party seized control of restive Assam from the center-left Congress Party, which promised to “work harder” to win people’s confidence after losing ground in several states.
“This win is historic by all standards. Phenomenal!,” Modi tweeted about the win, a boost for his right-wing government after poll losses last year.
Assam is the first northeastern state to be controlled by the BJP, whose traditional power base is in Hindi-speaking north, central and west India.
Political analyst Ashok Malik told AFP that Thursday’s results showed the BJP was now India’s only truly national party.
“This expansion for the BJP comes at a time when the Congress is shrinking, even though they have different social constituencies,” said Malik, a fellow with New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation think-tank.
“And now, the BJP is the only pan-India national party, which the Congress once used to be.”
The BJP needs to win state elections to gain more seats in the nation’s upper house of Parliament, which has been blocking reforms seen as crucial to fueling the economic growth it has promised voters.
Most members of the upper house, which has obstructed measures such as a planned standardised goods and services tax, are indirectly elected by state legislatures.
The BJP mounted a fierce campaign in tea-growing Assam, promising to support indigenous rights and crack down on illegal immigration from neighboring Bangladesh.
Migrants have long been accused of illegally entering the state from Bangladesh and grabbing land, causing tensions with local people and sporadic outbreaks of communal violence.
India’s seven northeastern states, joined to the rest of the country by a narrow sliver of land, are culturally distinct from the rest of the country and have a long history of separatist insurgencies.
“People were fed up and they wanted a change... that’s why this time they’ve voted for BJP and its alliance partners,” said Sarbananda Sonowal, BJP’s Assam chief ministerial candidate.
Partial results showed the Congress had just 25 of the total 126 seats in Assam and the BJP-led alliance had 87.
The party also made gains in Kerala in the south and in eastern West Bengal state, whose feisty Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool party had won a clear majority even before all the votes were counted, despite corruption allegations.
Modi’s party swept to power in a general election two years ago promising business-friendly reforms to overhaul the economy, but lost out in two critical state polls in 2015.
Early results from five states, whose results will be announced later Thursday, indicated regional parties would win in Kerala and Tamil Nadu in the south.
Jubilant supporters of Tamil Nadu’s popular Chief Minister Jayalalithaa Jayaram gathered outside her house to celebrate, many of them painted in the colors of the state flag.
In Kerala the Communist Party of India (Marxist) was seen leading in early counting, ousting a Congress alliance.
Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi, who fronted the campaigning in several states, tweeted that his party would “work harder till we win the confidence & trust of people.”
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Indian ruling party makes gains in Assam state polls
Indian ruling party makes gains in Assam state polls
EU leaders begin India visit ahead of ‘mother of all deals’ trade pact
- Antonio Luis Santos da Costa, Ursula von der Leyen are chief guests at Republic Day function
- Access to EU market will help mitigate India’s loss of access to US following Trump’s tariffs
New Delhi: Europe’s top leaders have arrived in New Delhi to participate in Republic Day celebrations on Monday, ahead of a key EU-India Summit and the conclusion of a long-sought free trade agreement.
European Council President Antonio Luis Santos da Costa and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen arrived in India over the weekend, invited as chief guests of the 77th Republic Day parade.
They will hold talks on Tuesday with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the EU-India Summit, where they are expected to announce a comprehensive trade agreement after years of stalled negotiations.
Von der Leyen called it the “mother of all deals” at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week — a reference made earlier by India’s Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal — as it will create a market of 2 billion people.
“The India-EU FTA has been a long time coming as negotiations have been going on between the two for more than a decade. Some of the red lines that prevented the signing of the FTA continue to this date, but it seems that the trade negotiations have found a way around it,” said Anupam Manur, professor of economics at the Takshashila Institution.
“The main contentious issue remains the Indian government’s desire to protect the farmers and dairy producers from competition and the European Union’s strict climate-based rules and taxation. Despite this, both see enormous value in the trade deal.”
India already has free trade agreements with more than a dozen countries, including Australia, the UAE, and Japan.
The pact with the EU would be its third in less than a year, after it signed a multibillion CEPA (comprehensive economic partnership agreement) with the UK in July and another with Oman in December. A week after the Oman deal, New Delhi also concluded negotiations on a free trade agreement with New Zealand, as it races to secure strategic and trade ties with the rest of the world, after US President Donald Trump slapped it with 50 percent tariffs.
The EU is also facing tariff uncertainty. Earlier this month Trump threatened to impose new tariffs on several EU countries unless they supported his efforts to take over Greenland, which is an autonomous region of Denmark.
“The expediting factor in the trade deal is the unilateral and economically irrational trade decisions taken by their biggest trading partner, the United States,” Manur told Arab News.
Being subject to the highest tariff rates, India has been required to sign FTAs with other major economies. Access to the EU market would help mitigate the loss of access to the US.
The EU is India’s largest trading partner in goods, accounting for about $136 billion in the financial year 2024-25.
Before the tariffs, India enjoyed a $45 billion trade surplus with the US, exporting nearly $80 billion. To the EU’s 27 member states, it exports about $75 billion.
“This can be sizably increased after the FTA,” Manur said. “Purely in value terms, this would be the biggest FTA for India, surpassing the successful FTAs with the UK, Australia, Oman and the UAE.”
