New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has won the Varanasi Lok Sabha seat for a third time. Mr Modi has beaten the Congress' Ajay Rai by over 1.5 lakh votes. In third place was the Bahujan Samaj Party's Ather Jamal Lari, who finished nearly 5.8 lakh behind the Prime Minister.
The party has won this seat nine times since 1991, with only RK Mishra of the Congress, in 2004, breaking that streak. And it was, for some time, another Congressman who raised opposition hopes.
Earlier today Mr Rai - who has contested and lost each of the past three general elections from the temple town - threatened (briefly) to cause, perhaps, the biggest shock in Indian electoral history.
Initially Mr Rai was leading the Prime Minister by 6,223 votes. As the day wore on, though, the PM stretched his legs and disappeared into the distance, finishing with over 6.12 lakh votes.
However, delight over the Prime Minister's win is likely to be tempered by the BJP's less-than-stellar performance across the state in this election, despite having dominated its electoral politics since 2014, when a 'Modi wave' swept UP (and the country) and corralled 61 of its 80 Lok Sabha seats.
Since then the BJP has been nearly unbeatable in UP.
That was followed by a Yogi Adityanath-led BJP scripting a stunning revival at the state level - by winning 312 of the state's 403 Assembly seats. In 2012 the BJP had won only 47 seats.
Yogi Adityanath claimed a second term in 2022, despite the party being heavily criticised over the farmers' protests. And, before that, the BJP amassed 62 seats in the 2019 general election.
The 2024 Lok Sabha election in UP was expected to be no different, at least according to exit pollsters, who handed Mr Modi's party a big win. A poll of exit polls gave the BJP 68 seats.
The Congress-led INDIA bloc was only expected to get 12 seats.
The reality, though, has been starkly different.
Driven by Akhilesh Yadav's Samajwadi Party, the INDIA group has gone head-to-head with the BJP in UP and will, most likely, finish a distant second - an unthinkable result before today.
The SP is set to win 38 seats - a record haul for the party in Lok Sabha polls - if the numbers hold, while the Congress will win seven. Crucially, the Congress is set to win back the Amethi bastion it lost to the BJP's Smriti Irani five years ago; the outgoing Union Minister had beaten Rahul Gandhi.
However, it is not Mr Gandhi who will gain revenge for the Congress.
It will be Kishor Lal Sharma, after Rahul Gandhi opted to contest the Raebareli seat - in addition to defending his Wayanad seat - left vacant by his mother Sonia Gandhi's shift to the Rajya Sabha.
Mr Gandhi is en route to massive wins from both seats.
The turnaround in UP is the story of the day and underlines the INDIA bloc's surprising challenge to the BJP, which includes tight contests in two other battleground states - Bengal and Maharashtra.
In Bengal Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool fought off an early surge from the BJP and is likely to improve on its haul of 22 (of 42) seats from the 2019 election. More importantly, it will knock back the BJP in the eastern state, from which much was expected after a record haul of 18 last time.
Meanwhile, in Maharashtra the Maha Vikas Aghadi, despite being rocked by splits within the Shiv Sena and Sharad Pawar's NCP, has dominated. The MVA, which also includes the Congress, is on course to win 29 of 48 seats in a state in which the BJP was hoping to make big gains.
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