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110712453 110694726 110702194New Delhi: The Election Commission of India has announced the results for all Lok Sabha constituencies. The BJP secured 240 out of 543 seats, while the Congress won 99 seats. The final result came from the Beed constituency in Maharashtra, where NCP (Sharad Pawar) candidate Bajrang Manohar Sonwane narrowly defeated BJP's Pankaja Munde by 6,553 votes.Though the Lok Sabha has 543 members, counting was conducted for 542 seats as BJP's Surat candidate Mukesh Dalal was elected unopposed.<iframe id="1058" class="electionschart" height="600" width="100%" src="https://toibnews.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/agi-election-prod/electionchart/1058.html" title="Elections embed" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>According to the results declared early on June 4, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to lead the government for a third consecutive term. The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has achieved a majority in the Lok Sabha, despite significant losses in three key Hindi heartland states. The election was widely viewed as a referendum on Modi's leadership and popularity. <iframe id="1057" class="electionschart" height="600" width="100%" src="https://toibnews.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/agi-election-prod/electionchart/1057.html" title="Elections embed" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>The BJP, whose candidates contested in the name of Modi, won in 240 seats, falling short of the 272 majority mark and needing the support of allies in the party-led NDA for government formation, a far cry from the 303 and 282 seats it had won in 2019 and 2014, respectively, to have a majority on its own. With support from key allies N Chandrababu Naidu's Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and Nitish Kumar's JD(U), which won 16 and 12 seats in Andhra Pradesh and Bihar, respectively, and other alliance partners, the NDA crossed the halfway mark. The Congress, which is part of the opposition INDIA bloc, won 99 seats compared to 52 it won in 2019, eating into the BJP's share in Rajasthan and Haryana. As the Samajwadi Party kept the INDIA bloc's morale high in Uttar Pradesh with 37 seats, the Trinamool Congress (TMC), another key member of the opposition alliance, won 29 seats in West Bengal, higher than its 2019 tally of 22. The BJP, which had won 18 seats in the last Lok Sabha elections, won 12 seats. The results did not throw up a landslide victory the BJP-led NDA had hoped for and what was projected by the exit polls. More than 640 million votes were to be counted in the world's largest democratic exercise, conducted from April 19 to June 1 in seven phases.Biggest upsets of the 2024 Lok Sabha electionsAccording to early Election Commission numbers on Wednesday, here are the biggest upsets of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.Smriti Irani: Union minister Smriti Irani, a permanent fixture in BJP's scheme of things across the last two governments, has conceded her defeat against rival, Congress old-timer and Gandhi family confidant KL Sharma, by a major margin (almost 1.30 lakh).K Annamalai: Tamil Nadu's Coimbatore experienced a surprising turn of events when BJP's K Annamalai was defeated in the Coimbatore constituency. The Tamil Nadu BJP chief lost to DMK's Ganapathy Rajkumar P by a margin of 1,18,068 votes.Rajeev Chandrasekhar: BJP minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar has been defeated by Congress politician Shashi Tharoor by over 16,000 votes.Omar Abdullah: In J&K's Baramulla, Omar Abdullah of the Jammu & Kashmir National Conference has conceded a huge lead to his rival (almost 2 lakh), Independent candidate Abdul Rashid Sheikh.Maneka Gandhi: BJP candidate Maneka Gandhi lost the Sultanpur seat to the Samajwadi Party's Rambhual Nishad by a margin of 43,174 votes, according to Election Commission figures. While Nishad secured 4,44,330 votes, Gandhi got 4,01,156 votes, according to the EC website. The third placed Udayraj Verma of the BSP secured 1,63,025 votes.Arjun Munda: Munda, Union BJP minister from Jharkhand, lost by a 1,49,675-vote margin to Congress' Kali Charan Munda.Mehbooba Mufti: As of mid-day, Mehbooba Mufti of the Jammu & Kashmir Peoples Democratic Party has conceded defeat with a margin of over 2,8 lakh votes against Mian Altaf Ahmad of the Jammu & Kashmir National Conference.Raj Babbar: In Haryana's Gurgaon, Raj Babbar of Congress lost to Rao Inderjit Singh of the BJP by a margin of 7.5 lakh votes.Bhupesh Baghel: Former Chhattisgarh CM Bhupesh Baghel has lost by a significant over 44,411-vote margin against rival Santosh Pandey of the BJP after several rounds of counting.Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury: Congress bigwig Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, faced defeat in stronghold of Baharampur. According to ECI data, as counting neared its conclusion, Chowdhury lost by nearly 85, 022 votes to Trinamool Congress's prominent candidate, former cricketer Yusuf Pathan.Arjun Munda: In the Khunti Lok Sabha constituency, Congress candidate Kalicharan Munda emerged victorious over Union tribal affairs and agriculture minister Arjun Munda by a margin of 1.49 lakh votes, as per official sources.Inputs from PTI

A smaller-than-expected poll victory for Prime Minister Narendra Modi is leading to worries among bond investors about greater populism.Fiscal discipline has been a hallmark of Modi’s decade-long administration, and many investors were expecting him to win a supermajority to reduce the budget deficit and further cut government borrowing in the next budget. The election results stunned traders and led to a selloff in Indian assets on Tuesday. Stocks saw their worst day in four years, bond yields rose the most since October and the rupee hovered near a record low. ICICI Prudential Asset Management closed a tactical bond exposure call on the 10-year government note on the possibility of a populist budget after the election results, it said in a note.Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party will fall short of a majority and will need its pre-election allies to form a government, the results showed. The coalition is way short of the 350-seat mark most exit polls had given the alliance. “There is fear that more populistic measures could be undertaken, more spending can happen, fiscal consolidation can be under stress — so all these kinds of fears are arising,” said Sandeep Bagla, chief executive at Trust Mutual Fund.Modi will face a series of crucial state elections in the coming months including Maharashtra, Haryana and Delhi.Strong revenues and a slowdown in spending during elections has led to a large government cash buffer. Moreover, a bumper dividend of $25 billion from the central bank, nearly double market estimates, had given rise to hopes that the new administration may use a part of the proceeds to further cut its 14.1 trillion rupees ($169 billion) bond borrowing plans for the current year. 110717324The administration has already lowered its shorter-term borrowings by 600 billion rupees for the quarter and there were growing expectations of a cut in budgeted borrowings. It has also announced a series of bond buybacks to take advantage of the cash position.Benchmark yields had slid below 7% to an over two-year low before surging back above that level on Tuesday. India’s strong growth as well as inflows ahead of inclusion to JPMorgan Chase & Co’s flagship emerging bond index have helped support the market. Yields are unlikely to fall much more, according to ICICI Prudential.Amidst the election volatility, investors are also readying for the Reserve Bank of India’s rate decision on Friday, where it is expected to stand pat.Modi now needs to secure the support of two key members of his broader National Democratic Alliance who control some 30 seats — enough to flip the balance of power in parliament. Leaders of those two parties have a history of switching sides and only joined up with Modi a few months ago, making it unclear whether they will stick with him or back the opposition bloc.“Bond markets will look at which parties constitute the government that is formed for next cues, as fiscal consolidation might take a backseat with the government leaning toward populist measures,” said Sandeep Agarwal, head of fixed income at Sundaram Asset Management Co. “The market may not want to price in a cut in borrowing currently.”The base case is for the government to stick to a medium-term fiscal consolidation roadmap but with a populist bias, UBS economist Tanvee Gupta Jain wrote in a note. The higher-than-expected dividend transfer to the government would create fiscal leeway to increase populist spending to support consumption for lower income strata while continuing its thrust to boost public capex, she said.“With realigning expectations of fiscal spending, the government bond steepening theme should still work well,” said Madhavi Arora, lead economist at Emkay Global Financial Services Ltd.

The INDIA bloc has become a success experiment and the main national Opposition bloc within a year of its launch In Patna in June last year. The coming together of the INDIA allies, besides their ideological and political opposition to the BJP, is also a story of how the leaders of the Congress and many important regional parties, facing unprecedented political and administrative offensive from the Centre and the relentless actions of the central investigating agencies, were forced into joining hands by burying their turf and ego issues to launch a united resistance and fight back against the BJP and the Modi government. As the BJP-led NDA has just managed to get a simple majority, with the saffron party losing its own majority this time, the INDIA bloc is bound to up its ante with some even emboldened to explore realignments with some NDA allies for a larger anti-BJP formation and even a government making bid.For an alliance that has had quite a bumpy ride since its Patna launch –– with its original anchor Nitish Kumar himself deserting it mid-way –– Friday’s show was quite an impressive leap forward. This, despite the fact that the alliance, taking in the internal contradictions, limited itself to only possible levels of coordination without a common stated agenda or not much across the states’ joint campaign and by skirting the tricky issues of the leadership by not projecting a challenger to PM Modi. In reality, the alliances were working from state to state with the Congress being the linking factors in many states with regional allies limiting to their respective turf. Yet, the INDIA bloc put up an effective and tactful electoral messaging, especially in countering the BJP’s “400-plus seats” war cry by projecting it as a plot to change the Constitution and to end reservation for the socially backward sections besides succeeding in rallying the electorally significant anti-BJP social and electoral sessions. That unity was further cemented when PM Modi made certain contentious campaign comments about the minority sections. By using the sense of understating they reached over INDIA bloc conclaves in Patna, Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi, they also managed to have a common stand in the tricky and sensitive decision of not accepting the invitation to the Ram temple congregation.The stunning SP-Congress show in Uttar Pradesh showed it repulsed both BJP’s Ayodhya and ‘double engine’ plank. The decision of Mamata Banerjee to delink from the Left and Congress in West Bengal proved correct as she has repulsed the BJP’s challenge by rallying the entire anti-BJP political and social sections around the TMC. The fighting show of the MVA in Maharashtra now gives the alliance optimism ahead of the upcoming assembly polls in the state. The RJD’s under performance in Bihar turned out to be a spoiler in the number games. Having done the alliance work in the LS polls, now the task and opportunity ahead for the bloc is to emerge as the formidable force in Parliament and outside by preserving its longer unity. Whether the Lok Sabha poll show will embolden to constitute a coordination committee for future works is being watched by political circles.