Uttar Pradesh holds key to Modi’s re-election bid in India

Uttar Pradesh's 80 parliamentary seats are crucial for PM Modi's re-election bid, with his BJP and the opposition fiercely contesting the key battleground state.

As India’s marathon national elections enter the penultimate round, the focus is on the tsunami battleground of Uttar Pradesh with 80 parliamentary seats – the largest of any state.

Uttar Pradesh alone has a population of 257 million people and if it was an independent country, it would be on the list of the five largest countries of the world. After the citizens go to the polls on June 4, the ability to secure more than half the seats in India’s parliament is deemed to be the best way to form the next national government.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is eyeing to achieve or surpass the phenomenal performances it scored in the state during the 2014 and 2019 general polls, clinching 71 and 62 seats, respectively. The Congress party alliance which is the main opposition party, on the other hand, is predicting that it can capture up to 79 of the seats come this election.

In the election campaign, Modi is touring Uttar Pradesh to garner support from the public with his ‘development agenda,’ highlighting new initiatives of infrastructural development in the state during his regime. However, the opposition has pointed to the absence of employment opportunities, inflation, and perceived dangers to women as issues that may undermine the BJP.

In which about a quarter of people were living below the poverty line, Uttar Pradesh depicts the difficulty of raising the quality of life in the largest democracy of South Asia. Although the state’s electrification and toilet facility indicators have improved in the recent past, the direction of change in the state holds a lot of potential to determine India’s future course.

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This has ensured a neck-and-neck competition in the state of Uttar Pradesh. That is how the 200 million voters distributed their votes on Sunday will determine who will reside in the prime minister’s house in New Delhi for the next five years.