India’s Ruling Party Badly Beaten in State Elections, a bad sign for the Congress party as the world’s largest democracy heads toward national elections next year

India’s Ruling Party Badly Beaten in State Elections

NIHARIKA MANDHANA And ERIC BELLMAN

Dec. 8, 2013 4:01 a.m. ET

NEW DELHI—India’s ruling party took a beating in state elections early poll results showed Sunday, a bad sign for the Congress party as the world’s largest democracy heads toward national elections next year.The initial results of the local elections for four states—Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Delhi—were announced Sunday following weeks of rolling polls which started last month.

While the final results had not been declared by midday Sunday, some outcomes were already clear: The ruling Congress party has been ousted from power in the capital as well as the western state of Rajasthan and the Bharatiya Janata Party will remain in power in Madhya Pradesh.

The results in the central state of Chhattisgarh were still too close to call midday Sunday. The results for polls in the small northeastern state of Mizoram are scheduled to be announced Monday.

The state elections are considered a barometer for the national elections that are scheduled to be held before the end of May.

Initial results suggest the Gandhi family’s scion Rahul Gandhi, has failed to excite voters in the states which have a total population of more than 180 million.

“To a very small extent, these results may create a perception that the Congress is on the decline,” said Congress spokeswoman Renuka Chowdhury. “But I’m not overly worried. We’ve seen such setbacks and losses before. Of course, we don’t take them casually or lightly.”

Voters across the country have expressed anger about corruption, inflation and violence against women among other issues, which seem to have worsened on Congress’s watch. The ruling party’s loss of seats in local legislatures has been worse even than last week’s exit polls had suggested.

Initial results from the Election Commission of India showed the Aam Aadmi Party, or common man’s party—born last year out of India’s anticorruption movement—had won or was leading on 29 of the 70 seats in Delhi’s legislative assembly.

The Congress party—which has headed the state government in the capital for close to 15 years and the national government for almost a decade—will see its representation slashed to less than 10 seats from the 43 seats it won in 2008.

Sheila Dikshit, the Congress party’s chief minister for Delhi since 1998, stepped down from her post Sunday as her party conceded defeat in the capital.

In the state of Rajasthan, the Congress party looks to have suffered another embarrassing defeat, seeing the number of seats it holds tumble to about 25 from 96. While the number of seats likely captured by the BJP climbed to 147 in the assembly of 200 seats.

“This win is very important for BJP,” said Kailash Nath Bhatt, spokesperson for the BJP in the state. “This shows that people have lost faith in the Congress party.”

He added that BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, who campaigned extensively in the state in the run up to the elections, can take some of the credit for the win as his rallies attracted huge crowds.