UP election results makes it clear that 2014 general elections were not an “aberration”
After BJP’s outstanding victory in recent Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand assembly elections top US experts on India predicts another Modi wave for the 2019 general elections, PTI reported.
The news agency quotes Adam Ziegfeld, Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the George Washington University, Washington, DC, saying that the Uttar Pradesh election results in which BJP won 312 of total 403 seats makes it clear that 2014 general elections were not an “aberration”.
“It was a big win for the BJP. Its candidate won with much larger margin of victory than compared to two previous winners, BSP and Samajwadi Party,” Ziegfeld said.
Sadanand Dhume, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute said that Modi has been established by this election as the “clear and favorite winner” for the 2019 elections.
“Demonetization is extremely popular. Indian people who have suffered themselves in the wake of policy, it won their heart and mind. Here is this man of sincerity who struck a principled blow to corrupt and the rich,” Dhume, who was in Uttar Pradesh during the elections, said asserted Modi as the front runner for 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
Dhume said that BJP played the cast card while pretending to be above it and this historic win in UP is unlikely to go for the economic reforms the private sector would like to have.
On the other hand, a professor at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at the Georgetown University, Irfan Nooruddin, predicted that BJP is unlikely to be get a simple majority in 2019. He said that Narendra Modi would rather be heading a coalition government.
Nooruddin said that BJP does not do well in a state where it faces a direct opposition and the opposition fails to do a disciplined election campaign state-by-state as BJP does.