The alliance led by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won 125 seats in the 243-member Bihar assembly, Election Commission data showed after counting started on Tuesday.
The counting process took much longer than usual because more electronic voting machines were deployed to avoid crowding in polling centres as per health rules.
“This result not only reflects the faith of the poor, labourers, farmers and youth in the successful fight of the Modi government against corona but is also a lesson for those who mislead the country,” the BJP’s second-most powerful leader, interior minister Amit Shah, said on Twitter.
Modi, who had announced a slew of projects for Bihar days before its three-phase voting started last month, said the win showed the state’s only “aspiration” was economic development.
About 1.5 million lowly paid workers from Bihar were forced to head back home from cities such a New Delhi and Mumbai, many on foot carrying luggage and children on their shoulders, after the factories or other places they worked in shuttered following Modi’s sudden announcement of a national lockdown in late March.
Bihar’s unemployment rate has averaged 22.6% since April, compared with 13% for the country as a whole, data from private think-tank Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy shows.
The state sends the fourth highest number of lawmakers to the lower and upper houses of parliament, and whoever rules it generally goes on to do well in electing those leaders too.
After Bihar, the BJP is expected to do well in state elections in Assam and West Bengal next year, though it has yet to form a strong base in the southern state of Tamil Nadu that also votes in 2021.
Writing by Krishna N. Das; Editing by Michael Perry
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