BJP alliance winning in India but landslide unlikely

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• BJP minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar concedes Congress leader Shashi Tharoor.
• BJP's Raebareli candidate concedes defeat to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
• BJP candidate loses in Ayodhya where Ram Mandir is located.
• Former Jammu & Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah concedes defeat to jailed candidate Engineer Rashid in Baramulla.
• Jailed Khalistani separatist Amritpal Singh leads from Khadoor Sahib Lok seat in Punjab.

Narendra Modi and his allies were heading for another victory in the India elections but with a reduced parliamentary majority.

Early figures showed Modi and his coalition allies, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), were on track to win a third term with a reduced majority after a six-week-long election that saw close to a billion people vote in seven stages.

Indian TV channels showed the NDA was ahead in nearly 300 of the 543 Lok Sabha (lower house of parliament) seats, where 272 is a simple majority. The opposition INDIA alliance led by Rahul Gandhi's Congress party was leading in over 220 seats.

Of the seats, the NDA is ahead, BJP accounted for nearly 240, which is short of a majority on its own, compared to the 303 it won in 2019.

A third term of Modi as prime minister Modi term with a slim majority for the BJP could introduce some uncertainty into governance as he has ruled with an authoritative hold over the government in the last decade.

However, politicians and analysts said it was too early to get a firm idea of the voting trends since most ballots were yet to be counted.

"It's a fair assessment to say 400 at the moment certainly looks distant," BJP spokesperson Nalin Kohli told the India Today TV channel, referring to some projections that gave 400 seats to the NDA.

"The BJP-NDA will form the government, that trend is very clear from the start," he added.

The trends so far show that the biggest upset for the BJP comes from Uttar Pradesh, the largest state in India. The opposition's INDIA bloc was leading in 44 Lok Sabha seats in the state and the BJP-led NDA in 35, according to trends on the Election Commission website.

INDIA bloc parties Samajwadi Party (SP) and Congress were leading in 37 and 7 seats, the election panel's data for polls to the 80 parliamentary constituencies in the state showed. The BJP was leading in 33 seats and its allies Rashtriya Lok Dal and Apna Dal in one seat each.

The same trend follows in the state of Maharashtra as the INDIA bloc, consisting of Congress, Sharad Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), and Shiv Sena (Uddhav Thackeray) has leaped ahead of the NDA alliance in the state.

Read Also: India election results: Modi alliance short of landslide

According to leads, the INDIA bloc is leading in 29 seats as opposed to the NDA alliance's 18 seats.

Delhi: BJP leads in all seven seats

Madhya Pradesh: BJP leads in all 29 seats in Madhya Pradesh.

West Bengal: All India Trinamool Congress leads on 30 out of 42 seats, BJP on 11 seat

Karnataka: BJP alliance ahead on 19 seats, Congress on 9 seats

Andhra Pradesh: BJP alliance ahead on 21 out of 25 seats

Rajasthan: BJP leads on 14 out of 25 seats

Punjab: Of 13 seats, Congress ahead on 7, Aam Aadmi Party leads on 3

Gujarat: BJP leads on 25 out of 26 seats

(Agencies)