The 2024 Lok Sabha election results threw a surprise with the BJP failing to win a majority on its own and stopping at 240, down from 303 in 2019. The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) won 293 seats, a steep fall from the 2019 results when the alliance got 353 seats.
The Opposition INDIA bloc bagged 232 seats. Congress bagged 99 seats, improving its 2019 tally significantly when it secured just 52 seats.
The 2024 results threw many surprises, here’s a list of some of them:
BJP loses Faizabad, which houses Ayodhya Ram temple
In one of the most remarkable defeats in this election, Dalit leader Awadhesh Prasad defeated BJP’s Lallu Singh by a margin of over 54,000 votes from the Faizabad seat, which includes the Ayodhya Assembly segment, where the Ram Lalla temple is being built.
The Ram temple was one of the overarching poll plank of the BJP. In April, Singh triggered a massive political slugfest after he claimed that the BJP needed a two-thirds majority in the Lower House of the Parliament to amend the Constitution.
Congress’ Rakibul Hussain wins by over 10-lakh margin
Congress leader Rakibul Hussain won by a record margin from the Dhubri constituency in Assam defeating three-time MP, perfume baron, and AIUDF chief Badruddin Ajmal. He defeated Ajmal bagging 14,71,885 votes, with the margin being 10,12,476 votes.
In Assam, the Congress won three out of the 14 seats. After his win, Chief Minister and BJP leader Himanta Biswa Sarma said that Hussain was the “hero of the day” and that his win must be discussed.
PM Modi’s victory margin down by 3 lakh from 2019
Prime Minister Narendra Modi won from the Varanasi seat for the third consecutive term with a margin of 1,52,513 votes, defeating his nearest rival Ajay Rai of the Congress party, and BSP’s Ather Jamal Lari who finished third. While Modi bagged 6,12,970 votes, Rai secured 4,60,457 votes and Lari got 33,766 votes.
In 2019 Lok Sabha elections, PM Modi bagged 6,74,664 votes, a margin of 4.79 lakh over his nearest rival. While her bagged 63.6 per cent of the votes in 2019, in 2014, he had secured 56.37 per cent votes. In the 2024 elections, his vote share fell drastically to 54.2 per cent.
Interestingly, Ajay Rai has given an impressive performance with his vote share increasing in successive elections. In the 2014 elections, he had finished fourth bagging 75,541 votes, and in the 2019 polls he finished third with 1,52,456 votes. In the 2024 elections, he got 4,60,457 votes.
Iqra Hasan wins from Kairana Lok Sabha seat
Hasan won from the Kairana Lok Sabha seat in Uttar Pradesh as a Samajwadi Party candidate. She is 27 years old. She defeated BJP’s Pradeep Kumar by more than 69,000 votes.
Hailing from a political family, Hasan holds a post-graduation degree in international politics and law from London’s SOAS University. She is daughter of two-time MP and two-time legislator, the late Munawwar Hasan. Tabassum Hasan, mother of Iqra, was elected as an MP from Kairana in 2009.
‘Engineer’ Rashid, lodged in jail since 2019, wins from Baramulla
Independent candidate Abdul Rashid Sheikh, popularly known as ‘Engineer Rashid’, who has been lodged in jail since 2019, won from the Baramulla Lok Sabha seat in Jammu and Kashmir. He defeated former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir and vice president of Jammu and Kashmir National Conference by over 2.04 lakh votes.
He has been in Delhi’s Tihar jail in a terror funding case filed by the NIA, and was arrested after the Centre scrapped the special status of Jammu and Kashmir and its statehood on August 5, 2019. His political innings began in 2008, when he quit his job as an engineer with the Jammu and Kashmir government to successfully contest the Assembly elections as an Independent candidate.
Sanjna Jatav, 25, wins from Rajasthan’s Bharatpur
Congress candidate Sanjna Jatav, 25, won from Rajasthan’s Bharatpur Lok Sabha seat, reserved for the Scheduled Castes. Bharatpur is the home district of Rajasthan Chief Minister Bhajanlal Sharma.
Jatav, a law graduate and a former zilla parishad member from Alwar district, defeated Ramswaroop Koli of the BJP by 51,983 votes.
Geniben Nagaji Thakor wins Banaskantha, first Congress win from Gujarat
In a first in the last 10 years, Congress tasted victory in Gujarat in this Lok Sabha election. A sitting legislator from Gujarat’s Vav assembly seat, Thakor defeated Rekhaben Hiteshbhai Chaudhari of the BJP by a margin of 30,406 votes from the Banaskantha Lok Sabha seat.
With the victory, Thakor put a dent on BJP’s citadel of Gujarat where the party was aiming to win all 26 seats for the third consecutive Lok Sabha poll. She was among the candidates who crowd-funded her campaign after the Congress allegedly ran out of funds, reported The Indian Express. She also claimed that she had pressure to get her nomination cancelled.
Congress wins Banswara where PM Modi made ‘infiltrator’ remark
Rajkumar Roat of the Congress-backed Bharat Adivasi Party emerged victorious in the Banswara Lok Sabha seat in Rajasthan, defeating BJP’s Mahendrajeet Singh Malviya by a margin of more than 2.47 lakh votes.
It is in Banswara that PM Modi made one of the his most vitriolic speeches during the election campaign, claiming that Congress would redistribute wealth of the Hindus, and give it to ones who are “infiltrators” and “those who have more children”, a reference to Muslims.
Chandrashekhar Azad wins from Nagina constituency in UP
As the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) failed to bag a single seat in the Lok Sabha election, the win by Dalit leader Chandrashekhar Azad, popularly known as ‘Ravan’, leaves a footprint.
Activist-politician Azad won from the Nagina constituency in Uttar Pradesh defeating BJP’s Om Kumar by more than 1.51 lakh votes. He had not joined the Opposition INDIA bloc and fought from his own outfit, the Aazad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram).