Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led alliance is leading as India counts votes after a mammoth seven-phase election – the world’s largest democratic exercise – that began on April 19 and ended on Saturday.

    A party or coalition needs 272 seats to cross the majority mark in the 543-member Lok Sabha, the lower house of India’s parliament.

    Exit polls show Modi is well on track to return to power for a third consecutive term, while the Indian National Congress party-led opposition bloc hopes to upstage him.

    The Election Commission says a record-breaking 642 million voters cast their ballots in the staggered election as it dismissed opposition concerns over how the votes would be counted.

    However, the voter turnout this year was 66.3 percent, about one percentage point lower than 2019.

    Could Uttar Pradesh see a tough contest?

    Early leads from the state suggest that the Samajwadi Party (SP), a part of the opposition INDIA alliance, is ahead in 19 of the state’s 80 seats. While that might not seem much, it could be significant — if those leads continue.

    Uttar Pradesh is India’s biggest election prize, with 80 seats out of the Lok Sabha’s total of 543 seats. It’s also the state that powered the BJP’s rise to national prominence in the 1990s and from where it won massive numbers in 2014 (72 seats) and 2019 (62 seats).

    Exit polls had predicted at least 68 seats this time for the BJP, on the back of the inauguration of the Ram Temple in the city of Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh by Modi in January. Can the SP prove those projections wrong?

    Counting ongoing for several state assemblies

    As Indians anxiously await to see who forms government in New Delhi amid the ongoing Lok Sabha results counting, residents of Andhra Pradesh and Odisha are also awaiting to see which party will become the ruling entity in their respective states.

    According to India’s election watchdog, the Telugu Desam was leading on 6 seats in Andhra Pradesh, while the Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party was leading on two. Elections were held on a total of 175 seats in the southern Indian state.

    In Odisha the BJP and the Biju Janata Dal were leading on one seat each. The total number of seats up for grabs in the eastern state was 147.

    BJP leads with first count in for more than 100 seats

    Election officials have started releasing vote counts for more than a fourth of India’s 543 Lok Sabha seats.

    Of the 171 constituencies they have released leads for, the BJP is leading in 91, with its allies are leading in several other seats.

    The Congress is leading in 33 seats and its allies in at least another 15 seats.