AHMEDABAD: India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is poised to win a comfortable majority in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat, three exit polls showed on Monday, ahead of national elections in 2024. Consolidate the fortunes of the party.
The western industrial state is a stronghold of the Hindu nationalist BJP, which has not lost a state assembly election there since 1995. Modi served as the Chief Minister of Gujarat for 13 years before becoming the Prime Minister in 2014.
Modi is widely popular in the country, partly because of economic growth and because of his strong base among India’s Hindu-majority population, with critics pointing to rising inflation, unemployment and growing religious polarization. Despite doing He is eyeing a third term in 2024.
The BJP faced a tough fight in the days leading up to the election against the main opposition, the Indian National Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which emerged from the anti-corruption movement in 2012.
Exit polls show that the 137-year-old Congress party is expected to lose many of its seats while the AAP is expected to make some gains.
An estimate by ABP-CVoter shows that the BJP will win 128 to 140 seats, giving it a bigger majority than in 2017 when it won 99 of the total 182 seats.
According to JEE News-CVoter, the Congress is projected to win 31 to 43 seats, almost half of the 77 seats it won in 2017, while the AAP is expected to win between zero and 3 to 11 seats. The results are due on Thursday.
An exit poll by JEE News estimated the BJP to get 125 to 130 seats, the Congress 40 to 50 seats and the AAP three to five seats.
JEE News showed BJP 117 to 140 seats, Congress 34 to 51 and AAP six to 13 seats.
