Modi's party wins election in national capital after decades

Swati Gupta, Bloomberg News on Feb 8, 2025

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party pulled off a victory in India’s national capital in a sign of his continuing popularity.

In a post on X, Modi announced his party’s win in Delhi. “It is our guarantee that we will leave no stone unturned in developing Delhi, improving the overall quality of life for the people and ensuring that Delhi has a prime role to play in building a Viksit Bharat (developed India),” he posted.

Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party is expected to win 48 of the 70-member legislative assembly, where it was leading, according to the Election Commission of India’s website. BJP is reclaiming Delhi after almost three decades.

Its main rival, the ruling Aam Aadmi Party, which means the common man’s party, is ahead in 22 seats. The final counting of the votes is still underway.

Aam Aadmi Party’s leader Arvind Kejriwal also conceded defeat in a post on social media platform X.

A victory in Delhi would mark the third major electoral success for the BJP in the last four months after winning the states of Haryana and Maharashtra. Not only would this win help the BJP recover from the setback in national elections last year, but it would also signal that the Modi government’s record tax cuts in the federal budget last week have got the approval of middle-class consumers.

“It is a big feather in their cap,” said Rahul Verma, a political scientist and fellow at the Centre for Policy Research. “Winning this state means a big thing for them.”

Several exit polls released Wednesday predicted a win for Modi’s party, which last controlled Delhi in 1998. The incumbent Aam Aadmi Party has been in power in Delhi since 2015 but suffered reputational damage in recent years because of corruption allegations against some of its leaders.

Most of the AAP initiatives were from their first term and they did not show an improvement on civic issues, said Verma. “Subsidies alone cannot make a difference to electoral outcomes.”

Several leaders from the AAP have spent months in jail amid allegations of impropriety in a liquor license distribution case, impacting their ability to govern. The party has consistently denied the allegations and described them as a political witch-hunt by the BJP-led government that controls the country’s federal investigative agencies.