Lok Sabha Election 2024 results did something which will be remembered for long in the history of elections. This is a rare occurence when the winning side, losing side, aliies, authorities and the 'janta' - all are happy, or is it so?
Let's look at the numbers, the saffron giant BJP failed to reach the majority mark alone of 272 and won 240 seats across the country. This means that in order to form the government, the BJP will have to rely on its allies, two of whom are in lot of talks.
Telugu Desam Party (TDP) of Chandrababu Naidu and Janata Dal (United) (JDU) of Nitish Kumar will most certainly play the king maker. Nisith Kumar's party won 12 seats whereas the TDP bagged 22 seats. So both these parties now have 34 MPs.
Now for BJP to form government, it needs a minimum support of 32 MPs. However, there has been a long history of both Naidu and Nitish to switch sides. Nitish Kumar had just changed the side twice during NDA's 2nd term.
On the other hand, smaller parties, independent candiidates have also won 18 seats. Both BJP and Congress will try to woo them for their support. Now the I.N.D.I.A has 233 seats which means if they could somehow manage to get 39 more MPs to support them, then the opposition alliance will come into power. Although, its a far fetched scenario but possibilities in Indian politics will never cease to surprise.
Congress, despite loosing, will be very happy as they successfully managed to stop the BJP juggernaut from getting 250 seats, let alone '400-paar'. With 99 seats under his belt, Congress is the second largest party now. Opposition leaders like Mamata Banerjee and Akhilesh Yadav will be extremely satissfied as both stopped the BJP in their respective states and defied all exit polls.
On a lighter note, no one has really brought the 'EVM hack' cry so far and accused Election Commission of turning blind eye so far so the polling officials will take a sigh of relief as well. While the round of talks already in motion, the Janta of India is watching closely.
A question which does rise is wether this result was a wake-up jolt for Narendra Modi. Does this signifies that BJP needs to make certain corrections, focus on local leadership more. With big names like Smriti Irani, SS Ahluwalia, Locket Chatterjee, Dilip Ghosh losing the poll, the BJP think tank must be brooding and needs to sit on the blackboard once again to chalk out.
Talking about the public sentiment, social media is flooded with memes and the biggest shocker has been delivered from Faizabad (the constituency under which Ayodhya is located). Ram Mandir, airport, special trains, infrastructure and what not was done by BJP in Ayodhya, but the saffron party faced a big lose.
Will Narendra Modi take oath as PM for the thrid time, is there some 'khela' breeding under the layers? How stable will be the next government? There are a lot of question marks and an answer which is not found yet.