As India counts over 640 million votes in the world’s largest election, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s NDA alliance is set to clinch a majority, but his party was unlikely to win on its own, as the running vote count showed.
Modi’s BJP party faced a joint opposition alliance of over two dozen political parties, called the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA).
Some key political figures stood tall in the face of a fierce battle.
Let’s take a look.
Chandrababu Naidu
Chandrababu Naidu, the former chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, and his Telugu Desam Party (TDP) were leading in 16 Lok Sabha seats and 130 assembly seats.
The victory has positioned Naidu as the driving force behind the party’s resurgence.
As the BJP lags behind the majority mark of 272, the Narendra Modi government will now notably depend on the backing of two seasoned kingmakers, Chandrababu Naidu and Nitish Kumar of the Janata Dal (United).
Naidu has a long history of acting as a kingmaker.
In 1996, when the public gave a divided mandate in Lok Sabha polls, Naidu, as the convenor of the United Front, propped up the HD Deve Gowda government with outside help from Congress, as per the Indian Express.
In 1999, Naidu’s TDP was the BJP’s biggest ally and supported the formation of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, which was short of the majority mark.
Nitish Kumar
Seen as a stronghold of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, Bihar contributes 42 MPs to the Lok Sabha and is an essential part of the “Hindi heartland,” which has over 250 seats.
JDU, the BJP’s other important ally, has secured 14 seats in the Lok Sabha polls.
He has long remained the senior ally in the NDA alliance in Bihar, especially in helping the BJP win 20 seats in the state when it performed poorly.
But recently, Kumar’s political career has been marked by a number of flip-flops.
He left the NDA in 2014 and teamed up with the Rashtriya Janata Dal, led by Lalu Prasad Yadav, to create Mahagathbandan in preparation for the 2015 Assembly elections.
He broke away to rejoin the NDA two years later, and won the 2019 general election.
But in 2022, after his party’s JDU did badly in the assembly elections and he started to feel uneasy with the BJP, he broke up the alliance and went back to form a government with RJD.
He only jumped ship once more and joined the NDA just before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Akhilesh Yadav
Since 2014, Uttar Pradesh has played a significant role in the BJP’s national electoral supremacy.
Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party, a member of the Opposition INDIA bloc, and the BJP are involved in a close battle in this politically significant state, which sends 80 MPs to the 543-member Lok Sabha.
At 4:15 p.m., the SP had gained 37 seats, the BJP 32, the Congress seven and the RLD two.
While the BJP and Jayant Chaudhary’s RLD formed an alliance prior to the elections, the SP and Congress are partners in the INDIA bloc.
While the BJP’s Ram Mandir pitch, which followed the opening of the historic Ayodhya temple, appears to have failed politically, Yadav’s solo campaigns and combined rallies with Rahul Gandhi appear to have done the magic.
The scenario is in sharp contrast to the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha election results, which were the primary factors in the elevation of Modi to power.
Rahul Gandhi
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is winning big in Kerala’s Wayanad and Uttar Pradesh’s Rae Bareli.
According to the trends, he has more than three lakh more votes in Rae Bareli than his closest opponent, the BJP’s Dinesh Pratap Singh.
In 2019, Singh lost to Sonia Gandhi, who had been representing Rae Bareli, since 2004.
Singh was defeated by a margin of 1.67 lakh votes.
She chose not to run for Lok Sabha in 2024 and instead transferred to the Rajya Sabha, where Rahul Gandhi became the Congress candidate in her place.
He also leads CPM’s Annie Raja, his closest opponent in Wayanad, by more than three lakh votes.
Kishori Lal Sharma
Congress loyalist Kishori Lal Sharma surprised everyone by defeating Smriti Irani, a BJP MP and Union minister, by a staggering margin of more than one lakh votes.
In the 2019 general elections, Irani unseated Rahul Gandhi from the Congress bastion.
She conceded defeat and said that she would continue to serve the people of the constituency.
Congratulating Sharma, Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra said she was certain he would win right from the beginning. Vadra led the party’s campaign in both Rae Bareli and Amethi.
Uddhav Thackeray
Uddhav Thackeray, the leader of the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), held nine seats in Maharashtra.
Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena, the party’s breakaway faction, was behind by seven.
Interestingly, Sharadchandra Pawar’s NCP led in seven Maharashtra seats, much like Thackeray’s NCP did, with its split party, Ajit Pawar’s NCP, following behind in one seat.
At 4.30 pm, the BJP was leading with 20 seats, while the INDIA bloc had secured 27 seats overall.
With inputs from agencies
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