India election results: Modi to lose outright majority

Narendra Modi: Indian prime minister is set to return to parliament as he wins national elections from his constituency Varanasi. After initially trailing behind his closest rival, Ajay Rai of Congress, he returned strong securing 612,970 votes beating his opponent by 152,513 votes.

Amit Shah: Home minister has won the election from his home state Gujarat, with a margin of 744,716 votes.

A candidate for the BJP in the Gandhinagar seat in Gujarat, Mr Shah secured 1,010,972 votes while his nearest rival, Sonal Ramanbhai Patel of Congress received 266,256 votes.

Gujarat, both Shah and Modi’s home state, appears set to provide a near clean sweep to the BJP, who lead in 25 of 26 parliamentary seats.

Kangana Ranaut: Bollywood actor Kangana Ranaut, making her political debut as the BJP candidate from Himachal Pradesh’s Mandi, is winning against Congress candidate Vikramaditya Singh.

She has secured 537,022 votes, while her Congress rival is behind by 74,755 votes.

Rahul Gandhi: Rahul Gandhi of the opposition Congress has won from Wayanad in Kerala. He beat Annie Raja of Communist Party of India, with a comfortable margin of 364,422 votes, securing a total of 647,445 votes.

The leading face of the Congress-led INDIA alliance, Gandhi is also comfortably ahead of his rival Dinesh Pratap Singh, with 687,649 votes in Rae Bareli.

In India people can contest multiple seats and must choose only one to take up as an MP.

Shashi Tharoor: Senior Congress leader and former UN diplomat has fought back to lead the BJP’s Rajeev Chandrasekhar in the race for Kerala’s Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha seat, which he has won for three straight terms.

Initially trailing the race, Tharoor was declared winner after he secured 358,155 votes, winning by a thin margin of 16,077 votes.

Akhilesh Yadav: For two elections in a row, it seemed like the BJP was unsurmountable in Uttar Pradesh. After the Ram Temple inauguration, the party hoped to secure over 60 seats in the state out of a total of 80 available.

However, the Hindu nationalist party is in for a big jolt, largely from the Samajwadi Party led by Akhilesh Yadav. The party is leading in 35 seats, and has been declared victor in three constituencies, While BJP is leading on 26 seats and has won six seats.

Mr Yadav himself is leading by 170,076 votes against the BJP’s Subrat Pathak.

Prime minister Narendra Modi’s party has lost a seat in the Ayodhya constituency, a deeply symbolic loss after he opened a grand but controversial Hindu temple there in January.

The Bharatiya Janata Party candidate, Lallu Singh, lost to a rival from the regional Samajwadi Party, Singh’s poll agent Kamlesh Srivastava told The Associated Press.

Mr Modi and his party had campaigned heavily at the temple dedicated to Lord Ram, built on the historic ruins of a mosque that was destroyed by Hindu mobs in 1992.

Experts said the January opening, where Mr Modi performed rituals inside the temple, marked the unofficial start of his campaign as they hoped it would resonate with his Hindu majority voters. Modi’s government had turned it into a national event by organizing live screenings across the country and closing offices for half a day.

The BJP had held a seat in Ayodhya that falls under Faizabad constituency since 2014.

Prime minister Narendra Modi is set to return to parliament as he wins national elections from his constituency Varanasi. After initially trailing behind his closest rival, Ajay Rai of Congress, he returned strong securing 612,970 votes beating his opponent by 152,513 votes.

Rahul Gandhi of opposition Congress party has won from Wayanad in Kerala. He beat Annie Raja of Communist Party of India, with a comfortable margin of 364,422 votes, securing a total of 647,445 votes.

Addressing a press conference after the opposition INDIA alliance posed a stiff resistance to Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, Rahul Gandhi said “the fight was to save the Indian constitution”.

“If I am being honest, when [the BJP] cancelled our bank account, sent chief ministers to jail and broke parties [through defection}, I was sure that people of India would fight for it.

“I am extremely proud of the people of India. And I am extremely proud of the people resisting the onslaught.

“The hardest work to save the Constitution was done by the poorest of poor, the marginalised and the tribals.

“I would like to thank you and assure them that we stand with them and that we will fulfil all the promises.”

The president of the Congress party, Mallikarjun Kharge, called out prime minister Narendra Modi and his party’s “arrogance” as the reason behind their underwhelming performance.

Accusing them of trying “to capture all the Constitutional bodies” and using them to strong-arm the opposition, he said: “People understood that if Modi gets another chance then the next attack would be on the Indian Constitution and their rights.”

Thanking the members of the INDIA alliance, party workers and voters for their support, he said: “Our fight has not reached its end.

“We want to ensure that the parliament works effectively and that the issues raised by opposition are not brushed under the carpet.”

The market tanked the most in four years after a stellar rally on Monday as the exit polls over the weekend predicted 350 seats for the BJP alone to secure a third term for Mr Modi.

However, the BJP by Tuesday afternoon was leading on 240 seats – a massive fall in numbers from its record 303 seats victory in 2019.

My colleague Alisha Rahaman Sarkar reports:

Prime minister Narendra Modi’s party has lost a seat in the Ayodhya constituency, a deeply symbolic loss after he opened a grand but controversial Hindu temple there in January.

The Bharatiya Janata Party candidate, Lallu Singh, lost to a rival from the regional Samajwadi Party, Singh’s poll agent Kamlesh Srivastava told The Associated Press.

Mr Modi and his party had campaigned heavily at the temple dedicated to Lord Ram, built on the historic ruins of a mosque that was destroyed by Hindu mobs in 1992.

Experts said the January opening, where Mr Modi performed rituals inside the temple, marked the unofficial start of his campaign as they hoped it would resonate with his Hindu majority voters. Modi’s government had turned it into a national event by organizing live screenings across the country and closing offices for half a day.

The BJP had held a seat in Ayodhya that falls under Faizabad constituency since 2014.

Prime minister Narendra Modi is set to return to parliament as he wins national elections from his constituency Varanasi. After initially trailing behind his closest rival, Ajay Rai of Congress, he returned strong securing 612,970 votes beating his opponent by 152,513 votes.

Prime minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Hindu nationalist party appeared to be falling short of a majority in the early vote count. If these trends hold, it would be a stunning setback to the populist prime minister who has never relied on coalition partners to govern.

Mr Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party is still expected to form the new government and return Modi as the prime minister for a rare third consecutive term as his National Democratic Alliance is leading in about 290 seats. A majority requires 272 seats.

But the BJP alone is only leading in 242 seats, far from the strong finish Modi was aiming for after his party won landslide victories in the 2014 and 2019 elections.

If the BJP doesn’t win a majority on its own, it could “be heavily dependent on the goodwill of its allies, which makes them critical players who we can expect will extract their pound of flesh, both in terms of policymaking as well as government formation,” said Milan Vaishnav, director of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“This would be truly uncharted territory, both for Indians as well as for the prime minister,” Mr Vaishnav said.

Since coming to power in 2014, Mr Modi’s BJP has governed in a coalition but has always had the strength to form a majority on its own.