Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s national governing party has swept to victory in an important regional election in India’s capital, where voters previously rejected Mr. Modi’s Hindu-first platform for nearly three decades even as it expanded its footprint elsewhere across the vast country.
By late afternoon on Saturday, the counting of most of the votes in elections for New Delhi’s regional assembly showed that the Bharatiya Janata Party was comfortably forming the government with over 40 seats.
The incumbent Aam Aadmi party, which has governed the capital area for the past decade but has increasingly struggled against Mr. Modi’s efforts to crush it, was trailing with about 20 seats.
A party needs 36 seats in the 70-seat assembly to form the government.
“Development wins, good governance triumphs,” Mr. Modi said in a celebratory message on X.
Arvind Kejriwal, the leader of the Aam Aadmi Party, conceded the election in a video message, saying: “Whatever the people’s mandate, we accept it most humbly.”
The political fight over who governs the capital region has come to epitomize the cutthroat nature of Indian politics.
Mudslinging rival parties have been competing for votes with handouts and with pressure tactics that include A.I.-heavy disinformation campaigns and outright jailings of politicians.
Meanwhile, delivery of basic government services for a region of more than 20 million people appears increasingly paralyzed. Residents in large stretches of the capital region lack drinking water on tap, instead relying on tankers sent into poor neighborhoods. The river that cuts through Delhi is deeply contaminated, and the air grows severely polluted every winter.
The Aam Aadmi Party, which was born out of an anticorruption movement that indirectly helped Mr. Modi reach national power in 2014, had hoped to win a third term.
But in recent years, much of the party’s top leadership was jailed by central investigating agencies that report to Mr. Modi in connection with accusations of an excise scam. Before last year’s parliamentary elections, Mr. Kejriwal, the A.A.P.’s leader and the chief minister of Delhi, was arrested on accusations of corruption involving the city’s liquor policy, in a case that is still pending.
Mr. Kejriwal continued to govern the capital from his cell. Once released on bail, he stepped aside from leading Delhi. He elevated a lieutenant as chief minister while trying to appeal to his support base, contending that Mr. Modi’s central government was deliberately denying Delhi residents the delivery of basic services to portray the A.A.P. as a failure and open the way for the B.J.P.
Mr. Modi’s strategy centered on challenging A.A.P.’s image as an anticorruption party of the common person. And he has said that if his party came to power in the capital, it would not make “any excuses or blame others for the problems related to Delhi’s health, traffic, electricity, water, transport.”
Opposition parties have accused the election commission, which regulates campaigning and oversees the vote, of creating an uneven playing field that favors Mr. Modi’s party.
A day before the Delhi results, several leaders of an opposition coalition raised questions about another important election in the state of Mahrashtra, where the B.J.P. won handsomely after strong-arm tactics had reshaped the political landscape. The opposition contended that the total number of votes cast in that election had exceeded the state’s adult population.
The election commission did not immediately address the discrepancy, but said it “would respond in writing with full factual & procedural matrix.”
One result of the daily bickering in the capital region has been a paralysis of routine governance, affecting vital issues like controlling pollution and providing access to water, garbage pickup and health care.
That was clear during a visit to Kusumpur Pahari, a slum on the edge of the poshest area of Delhi, in the days ahead of the vote. The arrival of a water tanker resulted in commotion as women and children jostled to the front, large containers in hand. Nearby, trash was piled outside the public toilet complex as residents complained about the lack of municipal services.
While Mr. Kejriwal still enjoys support in such working-class neighborhoods whose voters have long been the core of his party, the B.J.P.’s efforts also appeared to be finding traction.
“I have never seen anything but a struggle to get in queues for water,” said Vijay Prakash, 25. “At least Kejriwal has got toilets constructed and ensures we get water tankers.”
Others, like 68-year-old Lalita Devi, were doubtful. “Who knows, if someone new comes, maybe they will make better arrangements for us?”
Much of the campaign between the rival parties has been an effort to outdo each other in generosity to various sectors of the voting public.
The A.A.P. has highlighted its improvement of Delhi’s schools and promised financial assistance to women, free health care to older people and transportation subsidies to students.
The B.J.P.’s promises have included even handsomer handouts. It has vowed monthly financial help to women about 20 percent higher than what the A.A.P. is offering, a subsidy on gas cylinders, and a monthly pension for older people. It has also promised life and accident insurance for taxi drivers, in the past a core group of Mr. Kejriwal’s supporters.
The campaign has also included colorful ways of getting at each other.
The B.J.P. sent a truck around the city bearing a replica model of what it said was the “palace of mirrors” that Mr. Kejriwal has built for himself, highlighting in particular an outsized “toilet made of gold” — an effort to undercut the A.A.P. chief’s image as a common man and an anticorruption crusader.
Mr. Kejriwal’s party, on the other hand, showed Mr. Modi’s party as a vulture in its campaign ads, out to stop the facilities offered by him to Delhi residents.
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