Mon 23 December 2019:
India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) looks set to lose assembly elections in the eastern state of Jharkhand, counting trends showed on Monday.
Outgoing BJP chief minister Raghubar Das has conceded defeat, the NDTV news channel reported.
The Hindu nationalist BJP’s loss of a state it has ruled since 2014 is being seen as a setback for the policies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The latest trends from the Election Commission showed a pre-election alliance of the regional Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), the Indian National Congress and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leading in the races for 45 seats and the BJP for 26.
The majority mark in the 81-seat state legislature is 41.
Three of the five rounds of voting in Jharkhand were held at a time of nationwide protests against a new citizenship law introduced by the Modi government.
“It is wrong to treat the Jharkhand results as a referendum on the citizenship law. State assembly elections are fought on local issues,” BJP spokesperson Gopal Krishna Agarwal said.
Modi’s BJP, which won general elections in India in May with an enormous majority, has lost state elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra since January 2018.
SOURCE: DPA NEWS AGENCY
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