Resurgent BJP surprises in 2014 Lok Sabha polls

India voted overwhelmingly in favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party giving it a clear majority and a massive mandate in the 2014 General Elections.

Zee Media Bureau

New Delhi: India voted overwhelmingly in favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party giving it a clear majority and a massive mandate in the 2014 General Elections, sending its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi to 7 RCR.

BJP on Friday stormed to power at the Centre after a decade creating history and reaching the halfway mark on its own and along with the NDA crossing the 300 figure, sending the party workers in a tizzy and its leaders overjoyed beyond words. Addressing the media in the national capital, BJP president Rajnath Singh said that a new era has begun in the history of the country.

NDA which comprises BJP and 24 smaller parties is projected to bag 282 seats on its own after Rajiv Gandhi`s massive 400 plus victory in 1984. The half way mark is 272 in the 543-member House.
This is the first time that any non-Congress party has won a majority on its own. Before the results were out most of the BJP leaders were sure that it would romp home and touch the halfway mark along with its allies riding on the `Modi wave`. However, after the results were out today, it seemed that a `Modi Tsunami` had hit the country with BJP winning even in areas which was not traditionally its stronghold.

BJP has surely come a long way from a party of two Lok Sabha members in 1984. At the height of its popularity of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, considered to be BJP`s tallest leader, the party got 182 in 1998 and 1999. This was in the backdrop of the Ayodhya movement and the Rath Yatra undertaken by the LK Advani.

BJP`s amazing showing in Hindi heartland of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar along with Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh contributed in Modi becoming the next Prime Minister of India. The BJP had won 58 seats in 1998 in UP when it was catapulted to power. This time BJP has won an unprecedented 71 seats in UP and its ally Apna Dal winning two seats.

In the outgoing Lok Sabha, BJP had 116 members on a national vote share of 18.8 percent. The Congress had 206 members with a vote share of 28.55 percent.

In the 2014 polls the BJP has got a vote share of 31.4 percent against Congress` 19.5 percent.
The Congress, India`s oldest party which had ruled the country for a decade since 2004, faced its worst humiliation, raising question marks about the future of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty that has given India most of its prime ministers. Congress` de facto prime ministerial candidate Rahul Gandhi, whose father, grandmother and great grandfather were all prime ministers, was humbled by Modi in a way that the Congress plummeted to its lowest ever two-digit tally in a national election.

It had won 206 seats in the last election in 2009. On the other hand, the BJP, which debuted as a party with just two seats in 1984 when the Congress won a record 414 seats, was poised to take its tally to nearly 280 seats, a comfortable majority on its own, without any of its allies.

With IANS inputs

Zee News App: Read latest news of India and world, bollywood news, business updates, cricket scores, etc. Download the Zee news app now to keep up with daily breaking news and live news event coverage.