BJP alliance ahead in more than 300 seats

BJP alliance ahead in more than 300 seats

Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led NDA is leading in 306 seats and the opposition bloc led by the Congress in 115 seats, according to early trends available for 542 seats.

These are early leads and many more round of counting will happen.

According to Election Commission data, which has declared leads for 519 out of the 542 seats, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP is ahead in 279 constituencies.

These leads also indicated that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party may just have been successful in making inroads in Mamata Banerjee’s West Bengal and minimizing its losses in Uttar Pradesh where the BJP was up against an opposition alliance between Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party and the Samajwadi Party.

Early trends suggest the BJP is also ahead in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, the three states that the BJP had lost to the Congress in state election results declared just six months ago.

Counting of votes started at 8 am amid tight security after the Home Ministry in Delhi sounded a nationwide alert over fears of violence.

The national election was primarily a battle between the NDA led by the BJP’s Narendra Modi, and the United Progressive Alliance UPA led by Congress president, Rahul Gandhi, who was, however, not the alliance’s declared prime ministerial face.

The battle also assumed distinct forms in distinct states where the BJP was taking on a range of regional formations, from the Samajwadi Party - Bahujan Samaj Party - Rashtriya Lok Dal alliance in Uttar Pradesh to the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal or the Biju Janata Dal in Odisha. In some other states, particularly in the south, the battle was between distinct regional formations.

Exit polls had predicted Prime Minister Modi - who sought endorsement of his governance record of the past five years and projected his achievements as a decisive departure from the past towards a “new India” - will return to power. The opposition had, however, quickly dissed the projection; Congress president Rahul Gandhi called them “fake”.

The elections, held over seven phases, in 542 constituencies, witnessed the highest ever turnout in Indian history at 67.1% beating the previous record of 66.4% in the 2014 polls.