Prime Minister Narendra Modi lavished praise on BJP workers in Kerala after the party broke its Lok Sabha duck in the southern state by winning the Thrissur constituency.
Actor-politician Suresh Gopi secured a handsome win for the saffron party from the central Kerala constituency. Gopi secured 4,12,338 votes to triumph over CPI's V S Sunilkumar by a whopping margin of 74,686.
Kerala had traditionally kept the BJP-led NDA at bay and a rare win for veteran O Rajagopal in the 2016 Assembly Polls was the party's best showing from the southern state.
Gopi's unprecedented triumph was acknowledged by Modi in his first address after the NDA ensured a third term by securing 291 seats in the 543-member lower house. The NDA had 352 seats in the 2019 edition.
"Our workers in Kerala served the people and made a lot of sacrifices. They waited for generations. I won't say years, their wait was for generations. That wait has finally yielded a result," Modi said in his address at the BJP headquarters in New Delhi Tuesday evening.
Pledges to work with all states
Modi has pledged to work with the governments in all states, regardless of the party in power. Modi said the Constitution was the "guiding light" of the alliance and that the emphasis of the NDA in its third term would be to "uproot corruption".
No mention of 'Modi sarkar'
The PM repeatedly thanked the public for returning the NDA to power. "The people of the country have been kind toward me, BJP, and NDA. I thank all our allies from my heart," Modi said.
Though references to the 'Modi sarkar' and 'Modi ki guarantee' were often repeated during campaigns, the prime minister hardly mentioned it in his 30-minute address.
He only used his name once during the entire speech. "The country will write a new chapter in this third term with big decisions, and that is Modi's guarantee," he said. But the general tone was gratitude toward the allies, who helped the NDA retain power. He thanked TDP supremo Chandrababu Naidu and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, BJP's allies in the NDA, for the successes in Andhra Pradesh and Bihar respectively.
