Prime Minister Narendra Modi was on Tuesday poised to form the government for a third consecutive term with the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance getting a majority in the Lok Sabha, notwithstanding crushing losses in three Hindi heartland states after a bitterly fought election that was projected as a referendum on his popularity.
The BJP, whose candidates had 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 BJP's key allies N Chandrababu Naidu's Telugu Desam Party and Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal-United, winning 16 and 12 seats in Andhra Pradesh and Bihar respectively, and other alliance partners, the NDA crossed the halfway mark and bagged 293 seats in the 543-member Lok Sabha.
The TDP also swept the assembly elections in Andhra Pradesh dislodging Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy's Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party.
Preparing to take office for a record-equalling historic third term, Prime Minister Modi pledged to work with all states, regardless of the party in power, to build a developed India.
India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru had served three consecutive terms.
In his first speech after the results of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Modi laid out his vision for the third term saying it would be a tenure of big decisions and key emphasis would be on uprooting corruption.
It is the first time that 73-year-old Modi will be dependent on allies to be in the government since he came into politics.
"The fight against corruption is becoming tougher by the day. Corruption is being shamelessly glorified for political interest. In our third term, NDA will focus a lot on rooting out corruption of all kinds," Modi said.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge termed the poll outcome as the 'victory of the people and that of democracy'.
"We had been saying that this battle is between public and Modi... This mandate is against Modi. This is his political and moral defeat. It is a big defeat for a person who sought votes in his own name. He has suffered a moral setback," Kharge told reporters at the All India Congress Committee headquarters flanked by Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi after the good showing by the Congress.
The elections also highlighted the revival of the main opposition Congress party under Rahul Gandhi, and the unexpected role of the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh - under Akhilesh Yadav -- as a giant slayer.
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.
The NDA was stirred into life mostly around elections in the last 10 years as the BJP's big majority and shrinking opposition in the Lok Sabha made its allies mostly redundant but this time around, allies will matter more than ever.
The Congress, which is part of the opposition Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), won 99 seats compared to 52 it won in 2019 eating into BJP's share in Rajasthan and Haryana.
The INDIA bloc (without the Trinamool Congress) won 204 seats.
As SP chief Akhilesh Yadav kept the INDIA bloc morale high in Uttar Pradesh, the TMC, another key ally of the opposition alliance, won in 29 seats in West Bengal, higher than its 22 in 2019.
The BJP, which had 18 seats in the last Lok Sabha election, managed to win 12 seats this time.
In Uttar Pradesh, the BJP won won 33 seats as against its tally of 62 in 2019, and the SP's numbers went up, largely attributed to three factors -- consolidation of Muslim votes in favour of SP, smart seat-sharing agreements with the Congress to avoid splitting of non-BJP votes and widespread discontent with the BJP government over jobs and price rise.
The SP won 37 of the 80 seats at stake.
Modi retained the Varanasi seat but with a reduced victory margin of nearly 1.53 lakh votes. In 2019, the margin was 4,79,505.
Rahul Gandhi, often lampooned by the BJP as 'Shehzada', won Wayanad (Kerala) and Rae Bareli (UP) seats by a huge margin of 3,64,422 votes and 3,90,030 votes respectively.
The campaigning for the elections, which was conducted from April 19 to June 1 in seven phases, was marked by divisive communal issues and excessive reliance on Modi for getting votes. The prime minister held more than 300 rallies, travelling tirelessly almost every day to multiple locations.
The results also blew away the BJP narrative that it will score big in the southern states this time. It, however, returned a tally of zero in Tamil Nadu, and lost seats in Karnataka.
The BJP did make inroads in Kerala, winning a seat for the first time in a state where the Congress and the Left are the major political force, and in Telangana where it won or was leading in eight seats. Popular Malayalam actor Suresh Gopi won the Thrissur seat in Kerala to help the lotus bloom.
In Andhra Pradesh, BJP ally Telugu Desam Party won or was leading in 16 seats and the BJP was ahead or winning in three.
The biggest setback for the BJP, which faced a stronger challenge from the opposition, however, was in the north where, besides UP, the BJP also faced losses in Rajasthan and Haryana.
West Bengal also dealt the party a raw deal, although it more than made up for the losses in Odisha.
Madhya Pradesh went fully saffron with the BJP winning or leading in all 29 seats. In Gujarat, too, BJP won 25 of 26 seats. The party swept all seats in Delhi (7), Himachal Pradesh (4) and Uttarakhand (5).
The situation was not as decisive in other states.
In Bihar, the BJP won 12 and its partner JD-U in 12, a vote of confidence for its leader Nitish Kumar who swung from INDIA back to the NDA ahead of the elections.
The Rashtriya Janata Dal won four seats.
In Rajasthan, the BJP won in 14 seats, against all 25 its alliance won last time. The Congress won in eight.
Haryana also threw up a shock result for the BJP, where the party won in five seats, while the Congress claimed the other five. In 2019, the saffron party had bagged all 10.
It appeared that the election marked a return to regular politics, where voters were more concerned about bread and butter issues, especially in some Hindi heartland states where the opposition INDIA bloc managed to rally supporters around the issues of unemployment and price rise.
Maharashtra, with 48 Lok Sabha seats, saw the Shiv Sena split down the middle since the last election. The BJP, which won 23 seats five years ago, was down to nine seats, while its ally Shiv Sena could get seven.
On the other end of the spectrum, the Congress won in 13 seats, up from one, and the Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray in nine.
The Nationalist Congress Party-Sharadchandra Pawar faction got eight seats, giving the INDIA bloc, forged together by the common dislike of the BJP, a total of 30 seats.
However, a silver lining was provided by Union ministers Nitin Gadkari and Piyush Goyal who won in Nagpur and Mumbai North respectively.
In Odisha, the BJP did spectacularly well, winning 20 out of 21 seats, while the ruling Biju Janata Dal could not open its account.
It also won the Odisha assembly elections, with 78 out of 147 seats, a success show in the state it had never succeeded in capturing.
In Andhra Pradesh, the Chandrababu Naidu-led TDP won 16 of the 25 Lok Sabha seats, the BJP won three and the YSRCP four.
The Congress also gained in Karnataka, getting nine seats, up from one last time. The BJP, which got 25 seats in 2019, won 17.
Tamil Nadu scripted another story, not ceding any space to the saffron party. The ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam won 22 and its ally Congress nine, a notch higher than their 2019 positions.
