How Modi won back India’s big economic prize five months after losing it

The BJP’s record win in Maharashtra underscores how it has bounced back from its setback in parliamentary elections, even as the opposition has lost the momentum it appeared to have gained.

New Delhi, India – An alliance led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept elections to India’s second-largest state, Maharashtra, on Saturday, dramatically regaining ground it had lost just five months ago in a parliamentary election setback.

Maharashtra, with its capital Mumbai, is India’s wealthiest state – its gross domestic product of $510bn is larger than that of any other state and is also bigger than that of major global economies like Norway and South Africa.

On Saturday, the BJP-led alliance won more than 230 of the 288 seats in the state’s legislative assembly, with Modi’s party alone triumphing in 132 seats, giving the prime minister complete control over India’s economic powerhouse.

The party’s win marks a stunning resurgence in a state that has long been politically critical in India, but where, in Lok Sabha (House of the People) elections results in June, the BJP and its allies were trounced by the opposition, said analysts. The BJP and its partners had won just 17 out of 48 parliamentary seats in Maharashtra, with the opposition, consisting of the Congress party and its allies, winning 30 seats.

Saturday’s results left the opposition licking its wounds, even though the Congress-led alliance did win elections to the tribal-dominated state of Jharkhand after the BJP drove a shrill anti-Muslim campaign there. In Maharashtra, the Congress won just 16 seats.

“[The] Congress did not consolidate and frittered away gains of the parliamentary elections,” said Sandeep Shastri, a political scientist