With UP dealing a blow, BJP falls short of magic mark by over 30 seats, leans on NDA

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