 "Lok Sabha election results 2024: From Amethi to Nanded, key seats BJP is losing to INDIA bloc")
India was in for a big surprise as the counting of votes for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections began on Tuesday (4 June) morning. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was predicted to win by a comfortable majority, surpassing the 350 mark. While the NDA is presently ahead in 294 out of the 543 Lok Sabha seats, the INDIA bloc is leading in 231 seats and Others in 18.
The Congress, a part of the Opposition INDIA coalition, has given its best performance in the last decade and is slated to win 98 Lok Sabha seats on its own. The Grand Old Party was reduced to just 44 seats in 2014 and 52 in the 2019 polls as the Narendra Modi wave swept the nation.
Even if the INDIA group fails to form the government at the Centre, it is a sweet victory for the alliance, especially in Uttar Pradesh.
Let’s take a closer look.
Uttar Pradesh
The coalition between the Samajwadi Party (SP) and Congress, both part of the INDI Alliance, seems to have paid off. The NDA and INDIA bloc saw a neck-and-neck contest in Uttar Pradesh, which emerged as a BJP stronghold in the last two general elections.
As per the Election Commission (EC) trends, the saffron party has won four seats and is leading in 29 others in the northern state, which sends 80 members to Lok Sabha, and its ally Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) in two and Apna Dal (Soneylal) in one.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsOn the other hand, the INDIA bloc is currently ahead in 43 seats, with SP expected to win 37 and the Congress six. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) is trailing in all seats.
In 2019, when the two parties fought separately, the Akhilesh Yadav-led SP had won only five Lok Sabha seats and the Congress managed to win only one seat – Sonia Gandhi’s Rae Bareli.
The BJP had won 62 of the 80 seats in the Hindi belt state, while the BSP had bagged 10 seats in the last general elections.
In UP’s Amethi, Kishori Lal Sharma of the Congress has defeated Union minister and sitting MP Smriti Irani by over one lakh votes. Irani had emerged as a giant slayer in 2019 when she trounced Congress’ Rahul Gandhi from the Congress bastion.
The former Congress chief is set to win from Rae Bareli as well as Kerala’s Wayanad.
SP chief Akhilesh Yadav is leading with a comfortable margin in Kannauj against the BJP candidate Subrat Pathak. Pathak had defeated Dimple Yadav, Akhilesh’s wife, in the 2019 polls by a narrow margin of 12,353 votes.
In one of the major upsets for the BJP in Uttar Pradesh, its sitting MP Lallu Singh is trailing from the Faizabad Lok Sabha constituency, which includes Ayodhya where the newly-built Ram Temple was inaugurated this January. As of the latest trends, Samajwadi Party’s Awadhesh Prasad is leading with a margin of over 54,000 votes, with his tally at 552,177.
The BJP also appears to be losing the Kheri constituency this time as Union Minister Ajay Mishra ‘Teni’ is trailing. The SP’s Utkarsh Verma ‘Madhur’ has maintained a lead of more than three lakh votes over him.
Rajasthan
The Congress lost Rajasthan to the BJP in the Assembly elections last year. However, the Grand Old Party can now erupt in joy as Lok Sabha results for the state pour in.
The BJP had swept all 25 Lok Sabha seats in Rajasthan in 2014. The saffron party lost one seat to the Rashtriya Loktantrik Party (RLP) in the 2019 polls, winning the remaining 24 seats.
However, the Congress is set to breach the BJP’s dominance in the general elections in the desert state after 10 years.
The INDIA bloc, comprising Congress, Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)), RLP and Bharatiya Adivasi Party, is leading/has won 11 seats. The BJP has clinched nine seats and has an edge in five other seats, as per the latest ECI trends.
In the Banswara seat, Bharat Adivasi Party’s Rajkumar Roat has a lead of over two-lakh margin against BJP’s Mahendrajeet Singh Malviya.
CPI(M)’s Amra Ram has won by a margin of over 70,000 votes against BJP’s Sumedhanand Saraswati in Sikar.
The Congress candidates have been triumphant in six seats, including Churu, Dausa, Bharatpur, Ganganagar, Karauli-Dholpur, and Tonk-Sawai Madhopur. The party is also leading in Jhunjhunu and Barmer.
Maharashtra
After UP, it is the Lok Sabha results in Maharashtra that should worry the BJP.
The western state will be heading to polls to elect a 288-member Assembly later this year.
The Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), comprising the Congress, Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) and Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) is ahead in 27 out of the 48 seats and has clinched two, as per EC figures.
The ruling Mahayuti, consisting of the BJP, Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena, is hopeful of winning 16 seats and has already bagged one.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP won 23 seats and its then ally the undivided Shiv Sena got 18. The undivided NCP led by Sharad Pawar secured four, while the Congress and the All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) managed to clinch one seat each. An Independent candidate won the remaining one seat.
This time, the BJP is losing Nandurbar, Wardha, Bhandara Gondiya, Gadchiroli-Chimur, Nanded, Dindori, Bhiwandi, Ahmednagar, Latur, Solapur and Madha to the MVA coalition. It had won all these seats in the 2019 general elections.
The MVA is also set to clinch five of the six Lok Sabha seats in Mumbai, with BJP’s Piyush Goyal winning from the lone Mumbai North seat.
Mumbai North is considered a bastion of the BJP. Besides this constituency in India’s financial capital, the saffron party had bagged the Mumbai North-East and Mumbai North-Central seats in 2019.
West Bengal
The BJP has got a major jolt in Bengal as it failed to meet its 2019 tally of 18 seats.
The saffron party is leading in only 12 seats this time out of 42 parliamentary constituencies in Bengal.
The BJP is set to lose Cooch Behar, Barrackpur, Hooghly, Jhargram, Medinipur, Bankura, Asansol and Bardhaman-Durgapur – all seats it won in 2019 – to Mamata Banerjee’s TMC.
Besides these states, the Congress has finally breached the BJP’s bastion of Gujarat by recording its first win in the Banaskantha Lok Sabha seat. The saffron party had won all 26 constituencies in the state in the 2014 and 2019 general elections.
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