New Delhi, Jun 4 (UNI) The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) on Tuesday looked set to form the Union government for the third consecutive time as it won 159 seats and was leading in 133 seats in the 545-member Lok Sabha.
However, this election result showed a slowing down of the BJP juggernaut, witnessed in the last two Lok Sabha elections, as the party led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi fell way short of the magical half-way mark of 272 seats in the lower house of Parliament.
The saffron party, which had bagged 282 Lok Sabha seats in the 2014 elections and 303 in the 2019 polls by cashing on the ‘Modi charisma’, has so far won 144 seats and was leading in another 96, which is likely to take its tal;y to around 240 if the current trend holds.
However, it was able to cross the majority mark with the help of allies in the NDA as the bloc seemed likely to collectively bag 290 plus seats.
On the other hand, the INDIA bloc, led by the Congress, has so far won 120 seats and was ahead in another 106 constituencies.
This included 60 seats won by the Congress, which was also occupying the pole position in another 39 seats, and could finish with close to 100 seats. The grand old party displayed a tremendous comeback by nearly doubling its tally against last time’s 52 seats.
A big role in halting BJP’s singular electoral victory run was played by Uttar Pradesh, where the INDIA bloc, comprising Samajwadi Party (SP) and Congress, could finish with a tally of around 43 seats out of 80. While SP has already won 24 seats, it was ahead of its rivals in 13 more. The Congress has bagged five seats and was in the lead in one more.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, BJP got 62 seats in India’s most populated state.
The biggest upset was witnessed in the Gandhi family bastion of Amethi where top BJP leader and Union Minister Smriti Irani was defeated by an ordinary Congress worker Kishori Lal Sharma and that too by a huge margin of 1,67,196 votes.
Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana were among other states which played a key role in preventing the BJP from reaching the half-way mark of 272 seats. UNI AKK SSP
