Delhi Elections: Aam Aadmi Party Sweeps to Victory

A fledgling political party that has pledged to fight corruption in India’s capital rolled to victory in state elections in Delhi on Tuesday in a major political embarrassment for Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

India’s Election Commission said preliminary results showed the Aam Aadmi Party had won or was leading in the races for 65 of 70 state assembly seats. Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party had won one constituency and was ahead in 3 others. Complete results were expected Tuesday afternoon.

With such a wide margin of victory, AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal, an anticorruption activist turned politician, appeared likely become Delhi’s chief minister.

 “This is a victory of the people, a victory of truth,” Mr. Kejriwal told a crowd of screaming supporters outside his party’s office. “I hope that with Delhi’s 20 million people, we can make it a place where the rich and poor peacefully coexist.”

Mr. Modi said in a tweet that he had congratulated Mr. Kejriwal by phone and promised him the central government’s “complete support in the development of Delhi.”

AAP’s victory in the national capital put the brakes on a monthslong winning spree by the BJP. The party, which has deep Hindu nationalist roots, has campaigned furiously in state elections as it works to expand beyond its traditional strongholds.

Mr. Modi and the BJP have dominated Indian politics since sweeping to power in May after a landslide electoral victory that gave the party an outright majority in the lower house of Parliament—the first for any party in three decades.

The BJP has beaten both its main rival, the Congress party, and influential regional parties, taking control of a series of state governments in elections in recent months.

Winning state-level elections is important for Mr. Modi’s efforts to strengthen his party’s position in Parliament’s upper house, where his political opponents, who are in the majority, are stymying his economic program.

Tuesday’s projected loss delivers a significant blow to Mr. Modi, who has emerged as a larger-than-life popular leader and his party’s star campaigner.

In the run-up to the election, India’s leading dailies carried large front-page ads featuring Mr. Modi’s visage and asking the people of Delhi to “let Modi lead the way.”

But on Tuesday, the BJP dismissed suggestions that the vote was a referendum on his performance as premier.

“If this was a parliamentary election, the BJP would have swept it again,” said G.V.L. Narasimha Rao, a BJP spokesman said in a televised interview. “This cannot be a negative vote against the BJP. It is a positive vote for the Aam Aadmi Party.”

The results mark a stunning turnaround in Mr. Kejriwal’s fortunes. The politician founded AAP in 2012 after leading a mass movement against bribery. The party came to power in Delhi in 2013, but Mr. Kejriwal’s government lasted just 49 days. He resigned when the state legislature failed to approve a tough anticorruption law he backed.

Delhi has been under so-called president’s rule since then.

Mr. Kejriwal’s premature exit angered a section of Delhi’s citizens who came to see him as an anarchist unfit to govern the national capital. But Mr. Kejriwal managed to change their minds this year.

Early on, Mr. Kejriwal apologized for stepping down and ran an aggressive grass roots campaign addressing local issues. His promise of cheap electricity and water for Delhi residents helped him establish an image as a pro-poor leader in contrast to the BJP, which has a pro-business reputation.