An upstart anti-establishment party crushed India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in an election for the Delhi assembly yesterday, smashing an aura of invincibility built around Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi since he swept to power last year.
With the vote of the main national opposition Indian National Congress party collapsing, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), or common man party, was set to capture nine-tenths of the seats in Delhi, in what Modi’s critics said was a warning against the partisan politics of Hindu hardliners in his fold.
Winning power in India’s states is critical to control of the upper house of parliament, where Modi’s party lacks a majority and has been thwarted in its effort to pass reforms, including wider opening of the insurance sector.
Photo: EPA
Delhi is a small state, but high profile, and such a comprehensive defeat in the capital is a blow to the BJP’s ambitions to capture India’s second-most populous state, Bihar, in an election later this year.
The AAP, led by former tax inspector Arvind Kejriwal and campaigning on a platform of pro-poor policies and clean government, was set to win 65 seats out of 70 seats in the Delhi assembly, NDTV projected, the biggest ever tally for any party in the capital.
Congress, the BJP’s main nationwide challenger, failed to win a single seat, underlining how far the Gandhi dynasty has fallen.
The BJP, seen as a party of traders and big business, had slumped to four seats, its worst showing ever, with its chief minister candidate and former cop Kiran Bedi struggling to win her own seat.
Modi, who threw himself into the campaign, congratulated Kejriwal and said in a Twitter post he was ready to work with him for the development of the megacity of more than 15 million people.
“While Delhi is not very significant in electoral terms, a BJP loss there shatters the popular narrative around the BJP’s invincibility,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace associate Milan Vaishnav said.
HONEYMOON OVER
“A loss in Delhi certainly signals an end to Modi’s honeymoon. Furthermore, because it is the capital city, an opposition government, especially one led by the confrontational AAP, would be a constant thorn in the Modi government’s side,” he said.
Hundreds of AAP supporters swarmed into its office, wearing their trademark boat-shaped white caps, and showered their leaders with flower petals.
India’s main stock exchange shrugged off the BJP’s defeat, rising more than 1 percent, as traders turned their sights to a reform-friendly federal budget that the Modi government is expected to unveil in parliament later this month.
Modi swept to power with the biggest national election victory in three decades last year, promising to revitalize India’s economy. His BJP has won a string of big states in recent months.
While he has sought to fix governance and tried to push through reform legislation by executive decree after the opposition blocked him in parliament, corporate investment has yet to revive, waiting for structural reforms in the economy.
Meanwhile, social tensions have risen as Hindu hardline groups tied to the BJP become more emboldened, rowing with Muslim minority groups over religious conversions. Christian groups have also sought greater police protection after a series of attacks on churches.
Even US President Barack Obama warned during a visit last month that India could only realize its full potential if it practiced religious tolerance.
VICTORY FOR THE PEOPLE
“This is a victory for the people and a big defeat for the arrogant and those who are doing political vendetta and spreading hate among the people,” said Mamata Banerjee, chief minister of the eastern state of West Bengal and a bitter foe of Modi.
Critics have long accused the BJP of a deep-seated bias against the country’s 160 million Muslims, and of trying to push a hardline Hindu agenda.
The BJP denies any bias and said it is opposed to appeasement of any community.
A party spokesman said the Delhi election was a local poll and in no way reflected the BJP’s strength in the rest of the country. “This is not a referendum on the central government,” G.V.L. Narasimha Rao said.
Ajay Maken, the Congress party’s lead campaigner, said he would resign his party post after he failed to win his own seat.
There was no immediate word from either party chief Sonia Gandhi or her son Rahul on the election drubbing.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of