Congress grew from 57 to 99 seats and increased its vote share by 1.73%.

The President will invite the leader of the pre-poll coalition with the most number of seats to form the government

A new government must be formed before June 16, when the 17th Lok Sabha term ends. PM Modi has resigned and is currently running a caretaker government.

With 240 seats, down 63, Modi will need the support of NDA coalition partners to cross the 272 majority in parliament and form government. There are 13 alliance partners.

Their leaders are:

– Chandrababu Naidu / AP (TDP, 16)

– Nitish Kumar / Bihar (JDU, 12)

– Eknath Shinde / Maha (Shiv Sena, 7)

– Chirag Paswan / Bihar (LJP (RV), 5)

– Ajit Pawar / Maha (NCP, 1)

– Kumarswamy / Karnataka (JD(S), 2)

– Anupriya Patel/ UP (Apna Dal (Soneylal), 1)

– Pawan Kalyan/ AP (Janasena Party, 2)

– Jayant Chaudhary/UP (Rashtriya Lok Dal, 2)

– Urkhao Brahma / Assam (UPPL, 1)

– Assam Gana Parishad / Assam (1)

– Jitan Ram Majhi / Bihar (HMM, 1)

– Sikkim Krantikari Morcha / Sikkim (1)

– Sudesh Mahto / Assam (AJSU, 1)

Altogether, the NDA coalition government has 293 seats.

The INDIA alliance, led by the Congress Party, has 233 seats.

There are 7 other parties (YSRCP, VOTPP, ZPM, SAD, BHRTDADVSIP, ASPKR, AIMIM, and Independents) who aren’t aligned with either alliance and have, in total, won 17 seats. The largest entity among them is Jagan Reddy’s YSRCP (in Andhra) with 4 seats.

Rahul Gandhi said the Congress will talk to winners of the alliance as well as non-aligned parties. A decision on whether to form the government or not will be taken at an alliance meeting.

Some interesting factoids:

🗳️ 640 million (64 Crore) votes were counted this year, compared to 603.74 million (60.4 Crore) votes in the last election.

🫵🏼 First-time voters? There are at least 1.82 crore first-time voters in the electoral rolls.

🚫 The Indore seat, contested without any opposition, had more than 2 lakh NOTA (None of the Above) votes – the largest in India’s history, since the option came into effect in 2013. In this constituency, a stunning 14% of the total votes were cast for NOTA. The previous high was in the 2019 elections. In the Gopalganj Lok Sabha seat in Bihar, the maximum NOTA votes were recorded at 51,660, about 5% of the total votes polled in the constituency.

🙆🏻‍♂️ Two seats were won with a margin of less than a thousand. Attingal in Kerala, where the margin was 684 and Mumbai North-west in Maharashtra were the margin was 48.

And counting for Mumbai North-west was very dramatic. Here’s how it unfolded: Initially, UBT Shiv Sena’s Kirtikar led over rival Ekanth Shiv Sena’s Ravindra Waikar by just 681 votes. But a recount — prompted by the slim margin — showed Kirtikar was beating Waikar by just one vote! After a tense wait, the postal ballots were rechecked and Waikar inched ahead by 49 votes. So Ekanth Shiv Sena won the Mumbai North West seat by just 48 votes. Final tally, Waikar 4,52,644. Kirtikar 4,52,596.

Both, Maharashtra and UP, were the two states that almost every exit poll predicted would yield much higher results for the BJP, but the party ended with 33 seats out of 80 in UP, down from 62 out of 80 seats.

Congress’s large lead in seats in Maharashtra was also entirely unexpected. They emerged as the largest party in Maharashtra with 96,41,856 votes with 13 seats.

BJP also made inroads in South India. Of the five southern states – Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana – they made inroads in Kerala and Andhra Pradesh for the first time, with 1 out of 20 seats in Kerala and 3 out of 25 seats in Andhra Pradesh. In Tamil Nadu, meanwhile, where the party failed to open account, it significantly increased its voting percentage, rising from 3.7% in 2019 to 11.24% in 2024.

In the assembly elections:

BJP won in Odisha, securing 78 seats out of a total of 147, defeating Naveen Patnaik-led BJD, which had been ruling Odisha for 24 years.

In Andhra Pradesh, Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP secured a landslide victory with 135 seats out of 175, while its coalition partners, Janasena Party and BJP, got 21 and 11 seats, respectively.