NEW DELHI, India: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party has won the majority of parliamentary seats in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, with a large majority, offering clues to the national mood before the 2024 general election.

According to the Election Commission of India, Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had won or was leading in the race for 255 of the 403 seats in the state, which it currently controls.

Modi stressed that some political experts said the elections in five states in 2017 decided the results of the general election in 2019, which the BJP won with a sweeping majority, stating, “I believe this time, also, they will say that the results of 2022 have decided the results of 2024.”

Uttar Pradesh, which is home to about one-fifth of India’s 1.35 billion people, sends the highest number of legislators to parliament out of any state.

The victory in the northern state has come, despite the state and federal government’s much-criticized handling of COVID-19, the lack of jobs and anger over farm reforms that Modi cancelled after last year’s protests.

“The people of the state have rejected the opposition that was building a castle in the air,” said BJP spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia.

Due to policies, such as free staples for the poor during the pandemic, a crackdown on crime, and the party’s popularity among the Hindu majority reinforced by the construction of a temple on the site of a razed mosque, the party predicted it would retain the state.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which governs the national capital territory of Delhi, won a landslide victory in Punjab, but the BJP retained control of Uttarakhand and looked set to form governments in Goa and Manipur.

Senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty who has overseen the party’s decline, said on Twitter, “Humbly accept the people’s verdict.”

The win in Uttar Pradesh is a seal of approval for Hindu monk Yogi Adityanath, who was chosen as chief minister for the state five year ago and is seen as a future prime ministerial candidate for the BJP.