BJP wins 240 seats, Congress 99: EC declares results for all Lok Sabha constituencies

 New Delhi: The Election Commission of India has announced the results for all Lok Sabha constituencies. The BJP secured 240 out of 543 seats, while the Congress won 99 seats. The final result came from the Beed constituency in Maharashtra, where NCP (Sharad Pawar) candidate Bajrang Manohar Sonwane narrowly defeated BJP's Pankaja Munde by 6,553 votes.

Though the Lok Sabha has 543 members, counting was conducted for 542 seats as BJP's Surat candidate Mukesh Dalal was elected unopposed.

According to the results declared early on June 4, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to lead the government for a third consecutive term. The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has achieved a majority in the Lok Sabha, despite significant losses in three key Hindi heartland states. The election was widely viewed as a referendum on Modi's leadership and popularity.

The BJP, whose candidates contested in the name of Modi, won in 240 seats, falling short of the 272 majority mark and needing the support of allies in the party-led NDA for government formation, a far cry from the 303 and 282 seats it had won in 2019 and 2014, respectively, to have a majority on its own.

With support from key allies N Chandrababu Naidu's Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and Nitish Kumar's JD(U), which won 16 and 12 seats in Andhra Pradesh and Bihar, respectively, and other alliance partners, the NDA crossed the halfway mark.

The Congress, which is part of the opposition INDIA bloc, won 99 seats compared to 52 it won in 2019, eating into the BJP's share in Rajasthan and Haryana.

As the Samajwadi Party kept the INDIA bloc's morale high in Uttar Pradesh with 37 seats, the Trinamool Congress (TMC), another key member of the opposition alliance, won 29 seats in West Bengal, higher than its 2019 tally of 22. The BJP, which had won 18 seats in the last Lok Sabha elections, won 12 seats.

The results did not throw up a landslide victory the BJP-led NDA had hoped for and what was projected by the exit polls.

More than 640 million votes were to be counted in the world's largest democratic exercise, conducted from April 19 to June 1 in seven phases.

According to early Election Commission numbers on Wednesday, here are the biggest upsets of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

Smriti Irani: Union minister Smriti Irani, a permanent fixture in BJP's scheme of things across the last two governments, has conceded her defeat against rival, Congress old-timer and Gandhi family confidant KL Sharma, by a major margin (almost 1.30 lakh).

K Annamalai: Tamil Nadu's Coimbatore experienced a surprising turn of events when BJP's K Annamalai was defeated in the Coimbatore constituency. The Tamil Nadu BJP chief lost to DMK's Ganapathy Rajkumar P by a margin of 1,18,068 votes.

Omar Abdullah: In J&K's Baramulla, Omar Abdullah of the Jammu & Kashmir National Conference has conceded a huge lead to his rival (almost 2 lakh), Independent candidate Abdul Rashid Sheikh.

Maneka Gandhi: BJP candidate Maneka Gandhi lost the Sultanpur seat to the Samajwadi Party's Rambhual Nishad by a margin of 43,174 votes, according to Election Commission figures. While Nishad secured 4,44,330 votes, Gandhi got 4,01,156 votes, according to the EC website. The third placed Udayraj Verma of the BSP secured 1,63,025 votes.

Arjun Munda: Munda, Union BJP minister from Jharkhand, lost by a 1,49,675-vote margin to Congress' Kali Charan Munda.

Mehbooba Mufti: As of mid-day, Mehbooba Mufti of the Jammu & Kashmir Peoples Democratic Party has conceded defeat with a margin of over 2,8 lakh votes against Mian Altaf Ahmad of the Jammu & Kashmir National Conference.

Raj Babbar: In Haryana's Gurgaon, Raj Babbar of Congress lost to Rao Inderjit Singh of the BJP by a margin of 7.5 lakh votes.

Bhupesh Baghel: Former Chhattisgarh CM Bhupesh Baghel has lost by a significant over 44,411-vote margin against rival Santosh Pandey of the BJP after several rounds of counting.

Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury: Congress bigwig Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, faced defeat in stronghold of Baharampur. According to ECI data, as counting neared its conclusion, Chowdhury lost by nearly 85, 022 votes to Trinamool Congress's prominent candidate, former cricketer Yusuf Pathan.

Arjun Munda: In the Khunti Lok Sabha constituency, Congress candidate Kalicharan Munda emerged victorious over Union tribal affairs and agriculture minister Arjun Munda by a margin of 1.49 lakh votes, as per official sources.