People's Mandate: BJP Missed Halfway Mark By Only 6 Lakh Votes | Here's How

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to take oath for a third-successive term on June 9 as the BJP-led NDA crossed the halfway mark (272) in the Lok Sabha election 2024. 

Besides the alliance, the saffron party missed hitting the halfway mark target alone, otherwise, it would have been a hattrick of single-party majority for the BJP. The BJP-led NDA won 293 Lok Sabha seats, while the BJP alone bagged 240 seats, 32 seats short of the majority mark. 

According to reports, the BJP fell short of the halfway mark by only six lakh votes. In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the saffron party recorded 22.9 crores (37.3%) votes, while it secured 23.59 crore votes (36.6% vote share) in this year's polls. 

How BJP Fell Short By 6 Lakh Votes? 

The BJP would have met the halfway mark alone with 6 lakh additional votes spread across 32 Lok Sabha seats in several states and Union Territories. In these seats, the BJP came second to the winner by a close margin. 

In the Chandigarh Lok Sabha seat, BJP candidate Sanjay Tandon faced defeat by only 2500 votes against Congress candidate Manish Tewari.  

The party witnessed similar narrow setback in Hamirpur (Uttar Pradesh; 2629 margin), Salempur (Uttar Pradesh; 3573), Dhule (Maharashtra; 3831), Dhaurahra (Uttar Pradesh; 4449), Daman and Diu (Daman and Diu; 6225), Arambagh (West Bengal; 6399) and Beed (Maharashtra; 6553), showed the Election Commission data. 

In a strategic move ahead of the polls, the BJP fielded as many as 168 incumbent MPs in their respective seats and 111 of them got re-elected. On the other hand, the saffron party named new faces on 132 seats by not repeating their sitting MPs and retained 95 of them. 

The data shows that BJP's pre-poll strategy to field new faces worked in their favour. However, the saffron party witnessed a close-contest at various seats leading to their failure to hit the halfway mark in the third-consecutive election.