While the opposition INDIA alliance looked to be a powerful force, the BJP was expected to be the single largest party on Tuesday but may fall well short of an outright majority, making it dependent on its NDA partners to create government.
The exit polls and the ruling alliance’s expectations of a clear-cut victory did not materialize as the hours went by and the ballots for the Lok Sabha elections were tabulated.
With 246 seats gained or ahead of the key number of 272 in the 543-seat assembly, the BJP was signaling a return to coalition politics and a shift away from single-party rule. 300 was the NDA number. On the other end of the scale, the Congress led or won 96 seats, nearly doubling its 2019 total, while the INDIA alliance was ahead in 227 seats.
In the previous elections, the NDA secured nearly 350 seats, while the BJP held 303 seats on its own.
Jawaharlal Nehru’s record of being prime minister for three terms running was expected to be matched by Narendra Modi, albeit with much smaller numbers this time around as the BJP suffered setbacks in Uttar Pradesh (where the Samajwadi Party could overtake it), Rajasthan, and Haryana, and failed to make the gains that were anticipated in the southern regions.
Few leaders spoke out right away since there were many gray areas in an otherwise believed to be black and white situation.
BJP national general secretary Arun Singh said, “It is not a close contest. The BJP-led NDA is going to form its government with a massive majority. Let the counting finish, it will be clear. People of the country are with Modi.”
Congress’ Jairam Ramesh took the opportunity to hit out at Modi saying, “He used to pretend that he was extraordinary.”
“Now it has been proved that the outgoing prime minister is going to become former. Take moral responsibility and resign. This is the message of this election,” he said in a post on X.
Uttar Pradesh, the country’s most politically significant state with 80 seats, threw up a stunning verdict.
By guaranteeing a concentration of anti-BJP votes, the alliance between the SP and Congress turned the tables on the BJP in its greatest bastion, restricting the party to leads in just 36 seats as opposed to the 62 it had won the previous time. Close following with leads in 34 seats—a huge increase from the five in 2019—was the Akhilesh Yadav-led SP. Six seats could go to the Congress.
In Varanasi, Modi had the advantage of 1.52 lakh votes. But in Amethi, his party colleague Smriti Irani was losing more than 1.31 lakh votes to Congress candidate and virtually unknown Gandhi family aide Kishori Lal Sharma.
Among those leading from the state, where Yogi Adityanath had steered the Hindutva ship for his party, were Rahul Gandhi from Rae Bareli, Rajnath Singh from Lucknow and Akhilesh Yadav from Kannauj. As SP chief Akhilesh Yadav kept the INDIA bloc morale high in Uttar Pradesh, the Trinamool Congress, another key ally of the opposition alliance, was leading in 29 seats in West Bengal, a tad higher than its 22 in 2019. The BJP, which had 18 seats in the last Lok Sabha election, was ahead in 12 seats.
The BJP won or took the lead in all 29 seats in Madhya Pradesh, turning the state completely saffron. The BJP was leading or winning 25 out of 26 seats in Gujarat as well.
In other states, the circumstances were not as clear-cut.
In Bihar, the BJP led by 12 and its ally JD-U by 13, showing support for its leader Nitish Kumar, who had defected from INDIA to the NDA before the polls. It looked like the RJD would take four seats.
In Rajasthan, BJP was ahead only in 14 seats, against all 25 its alliance won last time. The Congress was ahead in eight.
Haryana also threw up a shock result for the BJP, where the party was leading only in five and the Congress in five. In 2019, the saffron party had bagged all 10.
It appeared that the election marked a return to regular politics, where voters were more concerned about bread and butter issues, especially in some Hindi heartland states where the opposition INDIA alliance managed to rally supporters around the issues of unemployment and price rise.
Maharashtra, with 48 Lok Sabha seats, saw the Shiv Sena split down the middle since the last election. The BJP, which won 23 seats five years ago, was down with leads in 11 seats, while its ally Shiv Sena could get seven. On the other end of the spectrum, the Congress was ahead in 12 seats, up from one, and the Shiv Sena (UBT) in 19. The NCP Sharad Pawar faction could get seven seats, giving the INDIA alliance, forged together by the common dislike of the BJP, a possible 38 seats.
However, a silver lining was provided by Union ministers Nitin Gadkari and Piyush Goyal who appeared on course to easy victories in Nagpur and Mumbai North respectively.
In Odisha, the BJP was doing spectacularly well, with leads in 19 out of 21 seats, while the ruling Biju Janata Dal was down to just one. It was also ahead in the Odisha assembly elections, leading in 76 out of 146 seats, a success show in the state it had never succeeded in capturing.
In Andhra Pradesh, the Chandrababu Naidu-led TDP was ahead in 16 seats of 25, the BJP in three and the YSRCP in four. Trends for Karnataka showed potential gains for the Congress, with leads in nine seats, up from one last time. The BJP, which got 25 seats in 2019, was ahead in 17. Deeper south in Kerala, the BJP could make its much debated electoral entry with trends showing actor Suresh Gopi way ahead in Thrissur. The Congress, which got 15 seats last time, was ahead in 14, including in Wayanad from where Rahul Gandhi was contesting. The CPI-M had gains in one.
Tamil Nadu seemed to be scripting another story, not ceding any space to the saffron party. The ruling DMK was ahead in 22 and ally Congress in nine, a notch higher than their 2019 positions.
Assembly elections also wrote their own narrative.
Naveen Patnaik’s BJD was on the verge of an unanticipated defeat in Odisha, which would have thwarted his attempt to secure a record-breaking sixth term as chief minister. In at least 79 assembly seats in Odisha, the BJP took an early lead. In contrast, the BJD nominees were ahead in 48 of the state’s 147 assembly seats.
With leads in 135 seats in the house of 175, Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party swept to victory in Andhra Pradesh, poised to unseat Y S Jagan Reddy’s YSRCP, which led by only 11 seats. In eight seats, the BJP held the advantage.
