The Election Commission of India has announced the results for 542 out of the 543 Lok Sabha constituencies. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has won 240 seats, while the Congress secured 99.
The result for the Beed constituency in Maharashtra is still pending, where the NCP (Sharad Pawar) candidate Bajrang Manohar Sonwane is leading against BJP’s Pankaja Munde.
Despite falling short of the 272-seat majority mark, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to form the government for a third consecutive term. The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) achieved a majority in the Lok Sabha, bolstered by the support of key allies after a fiercely contested election seen as a referendum on Modi’s leadership.
The BJP, which heavily campaigned under Modi’s name, won 240 seats, significantly fewer than the 303 and 282 seats it secured in 2019 and 2014, respectively. The BJP will rely on its allies, including N Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and Nitish Kumar’s JD(U), which won 16 and 12 seats in Andhra Pradesh and Bihar, respectively, to surpass the halfway mark.
The Congress, part of the opposition INDIA bloc, improved its tally to 99 seats from 52 in 2019, making significant gains in Rajasthan and Haryana.
In Uttar Pradesh, the Samajwadi Party secured 37 seats, maintaining the INDIA bloc’s momentum. Meanwhile, the Trinamool Congress (TMC), another key opposition member, increased its seats in West Bengal to 29 from 22 in 2019. The BJP’s count in West Bengal dropped to 12 from 18 in the previous election.
The results fell short of the landslide victory anticipated by the BJP-led NDA and predicted by exit polls.
