NEW DELHI - A coalition led by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party scored a landslide victory in legislative assembly election in Maharashtra, India’s most prosperous state, an outcome that analysts see as a major boost for the BJP after the party’s lackluster performance in parliamentary polls earlier this year.

The BJP, however, suffered a setback in India’s eastern Indian state of Jharkhand, where the main opposition bloc comprising the Indian National Congress, and its allies performed strongly in the local election.

The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance won 235 seats of the 288 assembly seats in Maharashtra, according to figures released by the Election Commission of India after votes were counted on Nov 23 following the state election three days earlier.

The BJP won 132 seats on its own, while its main alliance partner, Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena — a breakaway faction of the Shiv Sena party — won 57 seats. Shinde held the chief minister’s post in the outgoing government, but the BJP is reported to be insisting that the top job should go to its own candidate in the incoming administration given its much larger numbers.

The opposition bloc, which included the INC, a National Congress Party faction, and a faction of the Shiv Sena led by a former chief minister, Uddhav Thackeray, won 49 seats.

“The NDA alliance has won for the third straight term in the state. No alliance or party has secured a victory with such a margin in the last 50 years,” Modi said in an address to BJP workers late on Nov 23 following the Maharashtra election results.

The prime minister received a grand welcome as he arrived at the BJP headquarters in New Delhi, where was greeted by party leaders and workers.

In Jharkhand, a mineral-rich state, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, led by chief minister Hemant Soren, has won 34 seats, while its main ally INC bagged 16 seats. The BJP secured just 21 seats in the 81-member state legislature.

About 96 million voters were eligible to elect 288 members of the Maharashtra assembly on Nov 20 while Jharkhand’s 26 million voters cast their ballots in two phases on Nov 13 and 20.

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This was the first major regional election in India since the general election result in early June. Modi became prime minister for a historic third straight term after the parliamentary election, but was forced to rely on smaller regional parties as the BJP failed to score an absolute majority to form the federal government on its own.

Maharashtra was one of the states where the BJP suffered a setback in the general election, with the opposition parties winning two-thirds of the parliamentary seats.

Now, the landslide win in the state election has come as a big boost for Modi and his party.

“Victory in Maharashtra will boost BJP’s political position in the country. It will shape (the party’s) political ascendency for next five years,” said Karori Singh, former director and emeritus fellow of the South Asia Studies Centre at the University of Rajasthan.

The Maharashtra election result will have a ripple effect in other states, including forthcoming regional polls in India’s national capital, New Delhi, where an election for the local legislature is scheduled to be held early next year, Singh said.

In Maharashtra, Modi led his party's campaign from the front and held several rallies throughout the state. During the campaign, he announced various welfare schemes, many of which targeted farmers.

Various women-centric welfare schemes implemented by outgoing chief minister Shinde was one of the major decisive factors behind the victory of the BJP-led alliance, said Pratap Gaikwar, a businessman in New Delhi who hails from Nashik, a city in the northwest region of Maharashtra.

Under the women-centric welfare schemes, Shinde provided the equivalent of around $18 per month to women with annual family income of less than $3,012.

Shinde later announced that the assistance would be increased to $25 and also announced a plan to recruit 25,000 women into the state police force to ensure safety for women.

The Maharashtra election rout will have a lot of impact on the opposition's morale,” said Amit Rajendra Dholakia, a professor of political science at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda in Gujarat. “(The) opposition bloc will take a lot of time to recover, and this is the beginning of the end of regional parties in Maharashtra.”

It is a watershed moment for Maharashtra’s politics, because the role of Shiv Sena, a regional party which has ruled the state for many years is going to be diminished, said Dholakia.

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Reacting to the Maharashtra results, INC leader Rahul Gandhi said, "The results of Maharashtra are unexpected, and we will analyse them in detail.”

The writer is a freelance journalist for China Daily.