BJP Sweeps India But (Most Of) South India Holds Firm

Thursday brought good news for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP ) and Narendra Modi almost everywhere in the country, even West Bengal , where it had been trying to make inroads. But one major region is still holding firm against the saffron surge—at least, most parts of it. 

Southern states Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh have firmly resisted the Modi wave on Thursday.

In Kerala , the Congress -led UDF was leading in 19 out of 20 Lok Sabha seats in the state while in Tamil Nadu, the DMK-led Secular Progressive Alliance looked set for a clean sweep as it led in 35 of the 38 seats in the state. 

Jagan Mohan Reddy ’s YSR Congress swept Andhra Pradesh both in the state assembly and Lok Sabha elections. In Telangana, the TRS led in 9 seats while the BJP and Congress led in four and three seats respectively.

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Kerala

In 2014, UDF had won 12 seats while LDF won eight. BJP, which has never won a seat, saw its vote share rise  to 10.3 percent in 2014.

UDF’s sweep in Kerala is led by Congress  president Rahul Gandhi , who looked set to win Wayanad  by nearly 4 lakh votes (though he’s facing a tough time in his family bastion Amethi ).

In Thiruvananthapuram, seen as BJP’s best chance of winning a seat, incumbent MP Shashi Tharoor was leading with a margin of 40,000 over BJP’s Kumannam Rajasekharan.

Left-led LDF is in a close contest with UDF in Alappuzha and Kasargod.

Tamil Nadu

The ruling AIADMK had registered a landslide win in the 2014 elections under the leadership of its supremo late Jayalalithaa. On Thursday, it was trailing in most of the 20 seats it contested as were its allies, including the BJP. The AIADMK-led NDA is ahead in only three constituencies, according to the latest Election Commission trends.

TTV Dhinakaran’s Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam (AMMK) and actor Kamal Haasan ’s Makkal Needhi Maiam (MNM) failed to make any impact in their debut Lok Sabha polls.

Andhra Pradesh

In Andhra Pradesh, Jagan Mohan Reddy’s YSR Congress swept the state both in the Assembly as well as Lok Sabha elections, bettering even exit poll predictions and leaving the Chandrababu Naidu-led Telugu Desam Party facing serious questions about its survival.

The BJP, which faces an “anti-Andhra” tag in the state due to not yet signing off on special category status as well as accusations of being an outsider, has unsurprisingly not won any seat. 

Telangana

K Chandrashekar Rao’s TRS is leading in 9 seats in Telangana while the BJP and Congress led in four and three seats respectively.

In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the TRS had bagged 11 seats and the Congress two, while the BJP, YSRCP, TDP and AIMIM shared one each.

Karnataka

Karnataka, however, seems to be the outlier among southern states, with the Congress-JD(S) combine suffering a severe setback. The BJP was leading in 23 out of 28 Lok Sabha seats in the state in the last count.

While the Congress and JD(S) alliance had been showing signs of strain for some time now, it remains to be seen how it will hold up against a much stronger Modi government at the centre.

 (With PTI inputs)