New Delhi: Of the 224 parliamentary seats the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won with over 50 percent vote share five years ago, it has lost as many as 46 of those seats in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
Three such seats were allotted to its allies in Sheohar (Bihar), Kolar (Karnataka) and Baghpat (Uttar Pradesh).
The ruling party, meanwhile, managed to retain the remaining 175 of these seats this time.
All the 46 seats that slipped from the BJP’s grip went to the INDIA constituents, with the Congress accounting for the largest chunk at 29. The Samajwadi Party wrested 9, the NCP (Sharad Pawar) 4 among others.
Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh (10 seats each) and Rajasthan (9) — the states where the BJP’s performance dipped — accounted for more than half of these losses.
These 224 seats make up for an important analysis because they indicated the sheer dominance of BJP, beyond the number of seats it had won in 2019. However, as the results show, the opposition parties have turned the tables in a span of five years.
Not only did the BJP sweep Delhi (7), Uttarakhand (5), Himachal Pradesh (4), Arunachal Pradesh (2), Chandigarh (1) and Gujarat (26) in 2019, it won all 45 seats with a vote share of over 50 percent in each of them.
The BJP won all seats in the first four states yet again. But, the BJP lost Banaskantha in Gujarat, a state that it swept in the last two general elections.
While BJP won there with a margin of over 3.68 lakh votes in 2019, Congress’s Geniben Thakor cornered it by a margin of 30,000-plus votes. BJP had dropped the incumbent MP Prabhatbhai Savabhai Patel on this seat and fielded Rekhaben Hiteshbhai Chaudhari.
Chandigarh went to the Congress, although by a slim margin, after two tenures with the BJP.
In Rajasthan, the BJP had managed 24 seats and one seat went to its ally in 2019. All but one seat was won with a vote share of over 50 percent by the BJP. This time, the Congress party has snatched eight seats. One of them is Ganganagar where the BJP had won by over 4 lakh votes last time.
Congress’s Kuldeep Indora won Jaipur by 88,000 votes this time. BJP had dropped its sitting MP here. Sikar, which the BJP won by close to 3 lakh votes in 2019, went to the CPI-M by a margin of 73,000 votes.
In contrast, the BJP bettered its show in Madhya Pradesh as all 29 seats went to the party’s kitty. The previous election the tally was at 28, including 25 seats with over 50 percent vote share.
When it comes to the south, the BJP had a strong performance in Karnataka in 2019, winning 25 out of 28 seats. Twenty-two of these seats had over 50 percent vote share.
This time, the BJP lost six of these to the Congress and gave away Kolar to JD(S). Its Karnataka ally won the seat.
The BJP’s historic mandate in 2019 was powered by its performance in Uttar Pradesh, where it won 40 seats with such high margins, up from 17 in 2014. Overall, the party’s tally was 62 seats in the politically most important state.
This year, the party lost 10 of these high-margin seats. Nine went to the Samajwadi Party, while 1 to the Congress. The BJP had repeated sitting MPs in all 9 seats it lost to the Akhilesh Yadav-led party.
In Maharashtra, the BJP had 15 seats with over 50 percent vote share. It lost 10 – five to Congress, four to NCP (SP) and one to Shiv Sena (UBT). This also includes the seat of Jalna, which the party had won by a margin of over 3 lakh votes in 2019. This time, it lost by over 1 lakh votes to the Congress. Results in Maharashtra are of particular interest as it goes to polls later this year.
Another state that goes to polls later this year is Haryana. Here the BJP had won all 10 seats, but Rohtak had a winning vote share of less than 50 percent. The tally came down to 5 seats in the state.
The BJP had won Ambala, Sirsa and Hisar by over 3 lakh votes in 2019, but the results were opposite there. In fact, the BJP lost Sirsa to senior Congress leader Kumari Selja by over 2.6 lakh votes.
Bihar’s Arrah sprang a surprise as the mandate went from the Right to the Left. CPI-ML’s Sudama Prasad pipped Union minister R.K. Singh by nearly 60,000 votes. In 2019, Singh had won by over 1.5 lakh votes.
Similarly, Sasaram went to the Congress. The BJP gave away the seat of Sheohar to the JD(U), which won by 30,000 votes. All these three seats in Bihar had BJP victories with over 50 percent vote share.
The results clearly show that the opposition have breached into BJP strongholds and have ability to defeat the ruling party in Hindi heartland.
India follows a first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system — where the candidate with the most votes wins regardless of whether they have a majority. So, vote share only has a limited relevance, political scientist Suhas Palshikar had told ThePrint.
“In our FPTP system, a candidate winning by more than 50 percent votes in a constituency does not mean much beyond the local popularity of the candidate or party. But if such constituencies increase in numbers, as in the case of BJP in 2019, it surely underscores a rising hegemony of that party,” Palshikar had said.
Additionally, there were 7 seats where the BJP’s vote share was over 70 percent in 2019. The highest — 74.47 percent — was in Surat, where BJP candidate Mukesh Dalal won unopposed this year. Next was Navsari with 74.37 percent. Sitting MP C.R. Patil repeated his strong show as he won by over 7.7 lakh votes.
In Vadodara where the party won 72.3 percent votes in 2024, it won by 5.8 lakh votes. The party retained the remaining four seats of Kangra, Bhilwara, Mumbai North, Karnal with good margins. Barring Patil, the BJP had dropped all incumbents on these seven seats.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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