Populous Bihar region vote gives Indian PM Modi his biggest election setback since taking power | Democracy, elections and voting at Democracy Chronicles

This article first appeared on the Riding The Elephant blog. Indian politics have been hit with the biggest disruption since last year’s general election, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party suffering an unexpectedly heavy defeat in the state of Bihar’s assembly polls. A close result had been widely predicted, but on November 8 that…

MUMBAI, India — Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi suffered a significant political setback Sunday in a widely watched state assembly election, losing a bitterly fought campaign to an alliance of rival parties. The loss in Bihar, where Modi campaigned fiercely, was viewed as a rebuke of the governing Bharatiya Janata Party’s often divisive rhetoric and of…