BJP-led coalition sweeps Bihar, Bengal is next target: Alliance

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling coalition is on track to win a key state election in a vote seen as a crucial test of the leader's popularity in one of the country's poorest yet most politically influential states.

- 

Leads and partial results on Friday from the Election Commission of India, the country's election watchdog, show the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance, or NDA, headed toward a landslide victory in the 243-member legislature in the eastern state of Bihar.

A simple majority to form the government is 122 while Modi's alliance was poised to cross 200-mark with BJP alone taking about 90 seats. The final counting was still on, but the leads were substantial. A victory in Bihar, the country's third-most populous state with nearly 130 million people, is crucial as it sends 40 lawmakers - the country's fourth highest to the 543-seat lower house of parliament.

In a triumphant address that extended Bihar's electoral tsunami to West Bengal's turbulent shores, Modi declared the Ganga's sacred flow from Bihar to Bengal as a metaphor for the BJP's unstoppable momentum.

Speaking at the BJP headquarters amid jubilant crowds, Modi vowed to dismantle the "Jungle Raj" plaguing Mamata Banerjee's regime, framing the NDA's Bihar sweep as the harbinger of change in the neighbouring state.

"The river Ganga flows to Bengal via Bihar. Just as it has created a path of victory for the BJP in Bihar, it will now lead us to end the Jungle Raj in West Bengal," the PM proclaimed, his voice resonating with the fervour of a crusader.