June 05, Colombo (LNW): With most of India’s 640 million votes counted following the country’s six-week-long election, the world’s largest democratic exercise has delivered some unexpected results.
The governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is projected to win 240 seats, falling short of the 272-seat majority needed in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of India’s Parliament, which has 543 seats. However, with its allies, the BJP has still secured a majority. The opposition INDIA alliance, led by the Indian National Congress party, has won 222 seats.
These results mark a significant shift from the 2019 election, when the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) won 353 seats, with the BJP alone securing 303.
A series of political tremors appear to have reshaped India’s political landscape, leading to these surprising outcomes.
In Uttar Pradesh (UP), a state governed by the BJP since 2017 and holding 80 parliamentary constituencies, dramatic changes unfolded. UP, as India’s most populous state with over 240 million people, is crucial in determining the nation’s leadership. Both Modi and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi contested elections from different constituencies in this state.
In 2019, the NDA won 64 seats in UP, with the BJP taking 62, the Congress one, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) ten, and the Samajwadi Party (SP) five.
The 2024 election saw a starkly different outcome. The SP secured 37 seats and the Congress six, totaling 43 for the INDIA alliance. The BJP, along with its allies, won 33 seats, with three additional seats likely to be secured by its allies. Notably, the BJP lost in the Faizabad constituency, home to the Ram temple in Ayodhya, a central element of the BJP’s campaign.
