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Journalism of Courage
As the trends of the 2024 Lok Sabha election results started firming up by Tuesday evening, it became clear that the ruling BJP is falling short of the majority mark of 272 by more than 30 seats on its own steam, losing more than 60 seats as compared to its individual tally of 303 in the 2019 polls.
However, the BJP-led NDA alliance together seemed to be getting over 290 seats with significant contributions from two allies – the Chandrababu Naidu-led TDP in Andhra Pradesh and the Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) in Bihar.
The Congress, meanwhile, inched towards the 100-seat mark, thus almost doubling its 2019 tally of 52 seats.
The regional parties seemed to be back with a bang, with the Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party (SP) heading close to 40 seats, the Mamata Banerjee-led TMC pushing its 2019 tally of 22 seats to about 29, and the M K Stalin-headed DMK maintaining its sway over Tamil Nadu by posting leads in 22 seats. In Maharashtra, the NCP faction led by Sharad Pawar was leading in seven seats and Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena (UBT) was ahead in nine constituencies.
The revival of the regional parties in the Lok Sabha would mean that federal issues relating to the Centre-state relations will be back decisively into the national political discourse.
Significantly, the BJP has lost some ground to the Congress in direct contests in the Lok Sabha polls for the first time in 10 years, even as it has also ceded ground to the SP in UP as well as the TMC in West Bengal.
However, two regional players, the Naveen Patnaik-led BJD and the K Chandrashekhar Rao-led BRS, faced a rout, with the former leading in just one Lok Sabha seat in Odisha and the latter drawing a blank in Telangana. The AAP faced decimation in Delhi and was leading in just three seats out of 13 in Punjab.
In Madhya Pradesh, the BJP is again making a clean sweep, with former chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who was eased out of his post despite the BJP’s resounding victory in the November 2023 Assembly elections, was leading with a whopping margin of over 8.21 lakh votes. In Gujarat too, the BJP was ahead in 25 out of the 26 seats.
While the BJP was set to sweep Odisha, leading in 19 out of 21 seats, the party boosted its standing significantly in Telangana, where its tally rose to 8 seats from four in 2019. However, the BJP’s losses in its core bastions exceeded its gains in new belts.
Uttar Pradesh — which powered the BJP into crossing the magic mark and
notch up an absolute majority in the 2014 and 2019 polls — seems to have dealt the BJP a major blow, with the party losing nearly 50 of the 80 seats in the state. With leads in 32 seats, it is six seats behind the SP, and 30 seats lower than its 2019 tally of 62 seats.
The Congress’s Kishori Lal Sharma registered a lead of about 1,67,000 votes over Union minister Smriti Irani in Amethi by noon. In Faizabad, of which Ayodhya is part, the BJP is trailing the SP by more than 54,000 votes.
Maharashtra seems to have emerged as another state of major concern for the BJP, with the party alone losing 13 seats over its tally of 23 the last time, despite contesting more seats. The NDA as a whole is suffering losses in the state, with the Congress, Shiv Sena (UBT) and the Sharad Pawar NCP faring well. The CM Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena and the Ajit Pawar-led NCP are falling behind. In Baramati, Sharad Pawar’s daughter Supriya Sule was ahead of nephew Ajit’s wife Sunetra by 53,000 votes.
In Bengal, the BJP’s tally seems to be falling from the 18 it got last time, with the leads showing the TMC surging to 29 seats, and the BJP plunging to just 12 seats.
In Rajasthan, the BJP seemed to be losing altogether 11 seats as compared to its 2019 figure, losing eight seats to the Congress. In Haryana, too, which the BJP swept the last time, the BJP was showing leads in just five of 10 seats, with the Congress set to gain five seats.
