The Insights and Surprises of 2024 India Election Results

The numbers from the 2019 India elections results have quite a difference than the 2024 results.

India’s 640 million votes counted for the six-week long election. The world’s and history’s largest democratic country appears to have given out some big surprises. The Hindu Nationalist party surprisingly lost its majority in the parliament in the election verdict. Narendra Modi, the Indian Prime Minister was set to meet his allies to discuss and form the government.

The governing party of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP won 240 seats but fell short of a few seats. The mark that signifies the majority of the Lok Sabha, lower house of India’s parliament is 272 seats and consists of a total of 543 seats. BJP has bagged a victory and is set to return for the third term by winning 293 Lok Sabha seats across the country. The party majorly depends on alliance partners like TDP and JD(U) to secure the required number of seats to form the government. The opposition INDIA alliance that is led by the Indian National Congress party has won 232 seats.

On the contrary the numbers from the 2019 elections results have quite a difference than the 2024 results. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) that is led by BJP won 353 seats, 303 of which were bagged by the BJP alone.

The opposition INDIA bloc which consists of Congress, the Samajwadi Party (SP), Trinamool Congress (TMC) and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) won a total 232 seats. The Congress closed a number of 99 seats while the SP rose by winning 37 seats. TMC has 29 seats on their side in West Bengal while DMK led with 22 seats. The NCP led by Sharad Pawar won 7 seats and Uddhav Thackery led Shiv Sena secured 9 seats. RJD was leading in 4 constituencies in Bihar and AAP and JMM in 3.

A state governed by BJP since 2017, Uttar Pradesh is home to a total of 80 constituencies. With the population of 240 million people, it holds the power to decide who governs in New Delhi. To everyone’s surprise the INDIA alliance took over UP with 37 seats won by SP and 6 seats by Congress. Whereas in 2019 the NDA won 64 seats where BJP alone bagged 62 seats, Congress won 1 seat, BSP won 10 and SP had 5 on their side.

Most surprisingly, BJP lost in the Faizabad constituency home to Ram temple in Ayodhya, which was created by Narendra Modi and was the centrepiece of the BJP’s campaign. The temple was built on the ruins of the Babri Mosque, which was demolished by a Hindu mob in 1992.

In 2019, BJP won 25 out of 28 constituencies in Karnataka while 2 were won by NDA affiliated candidates and Congress won just 1 seat. However, in this election BJP won 17 seats while JDS won in 2 constituencies and Congress won 10 seats. Karnataka is known to be crucial for BJP as it is the only southern state that it has ever won.

The party suffered from major setbacks even though it has a majority by falling down 63 from its 2019 tally of 303 seats. The saffron party, BJP was ambitious and aimed to win 370 seats alone and an additional 400 seats for the NDA. Although it did lose support and power from the East to the West and in the heartland state, Uttar Pradesh.

Its vote share also declined from 37.7 percent to 36.56 percent. The exit polls made predictions of BJP making massive gains in the south. Despite the estimates it failed to secure a single seat in Tamil Nadu. Although it did open an account in Kerala for the first time and doubled the number of seats from 4 to 8 in Telangana.