Vote counting begins – when will we know the results?
Vote counting is now underway at counting stations in India’s 543 constituencies. Paper ballots, cast by those who cannot vote electronically, will be counted first. Then electronic votes will be counted. These are cast on electronic voting machines, which have been used since 2,000.
Results are announced for each constituency as soon as counting is completed. India follows the first-past-the-post system, under which a candidate with the highest number of votes wins, regardless of garnering a majority or not.
Result trends generally become clear by the afternoon of counting day and are flashed on television news networks. The official count from the Election Commission of India can come hours later.
In past years, key trends have been clear by mid-afternoon with losers conceding defeat, even though full and final results may only come late on Tuesday night.
Celebrations are expected at the headquarters of Modi’s BJP if the results reflect exit poll predictions.
The winners of the general election are expected to form a new government by the middle of June.
After the ECI announces the results for all 543 seats, the president invites the leader of the party, or an alliance, which has more than half the seats to form the government.
The party or coalition with 272 or more seats then chooses a prime minister to lead the government.
Key events
Hannah Ellis-Petersen
Amritpal Singh, a self-styled radical Sikh preacher who was jailed on terrorism charges last year, is contesting a seat in the state of Punjab from behind bars and early counting shows he is leading the votes.
Last year, Singh became a prominent figure in the separatist Khalistan movement, outlawed in India, which believes Punjab should be an independent state for Sikhs. After being implicated in incidents of violence, he went on the run from the authorities, prompting a state-wide manhunt.
Singh was eventually apprehended and remains in a high security jail. He is running in this election as an independent candidate for the Khadoor Sahib seat in Punjab.
Hannah Ellis-Petersen
The Nehru-Gandhi dynasty were once the giants of India’s politics – the family at the forefront of the independence battle, who built up the formidable Congress party and produced three prime ministers.
But now the family is fighting for their survival. India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, and his Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) government are seeking a third term in power in the elections. Most analysts and exit polls suggest a BJP victory against Congress and its allies once again seems likely.
Ten years in opposition have left Congress and the Gandhi family in decline, accused of elitism, disorganisation and weak leadership. The party presence on the ground remains lacklustre, compared with the BJP’s well-organised electoral machine and its disciplined cadre.
Analysts say that a third consecutive loss to Modi in June would deal another crippling blow to the family and could throw the future of the party as a viable political force into question.
Rahul Verma, a fellow at the Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research, said the Congress party was akin to a “large ship which has rusted for a very long period of time”.
Verman warned that if Congress faced another major election loss, it could find itself with state, or even national, rebellions on its hands, which could further diminish and even fracture the party to devastating effect. “This election is critical for Congress,” he said.
Hannah Ellis-Petersen
Rahul Gandhi, the most recognisable face of the opposition Congress party, is ahead by a wide margin in both seats where he is contestesting: Raebareli in Uttar Pradesh and Wayanad in Kerala.
It’s a marked difference from 2019 when Gandhi lost the family seat in Uttar Pradesh after the BJP swept the state. But this time, early counting suggests that the BJP will not perform so well in Uttar Pradesh, which is home to a population larger than Brazil and is considered to be one of India’s most politically important states.
This was a story we did about the decline of the Gandhi dynasty and Gandhi’s battle to win Raebareli in this election:
Three hours into the count, NDA has majority with 294 of 543 seats
It is almost 11am IST, which means the vote count has been underway for just under three hours. We’re expecting results of seat gained and lost at the earliest in the early afternoon, local time.
For now, with all 543 seats reporting some results, the Modi-led NDA bloc leads in 292 of the 543 seats up for grabs, or 54%, with Modi’s party, the BJP, responsible for the vast majority of these leads.
The opposition INDIA bloc leads in 222 seats, with the Congress party responsible for most of these votes. It is well ahead of the 181 needed to prevent the NDA from securing a two-thirds majority. But again, this is early days.
Aside from the one seat won by the BJP by default in Surat, after every other candidate was either disqualified or dropped out, no seats have been called for any party.
Via Reuters: If Modi’s victory is confirmed, his BJP will have triumphed in a vitriolic campaign in which parties accused each other of religious bias and of posing a threat to sections of the population.
Investors have already cheered the prospects of another Modi term, expecting it to deliver further years of strong economic growth and pro-business reforms, while a possible two-thirds majority in parliament could allow major changes to the constitution, rivals and critics fear.
“The next government’s main task will be to set India on the path of getting rich before it ages,” the Times of India newspaper said in an editorial on Tuesday, referring to the young, working age population in the world’s most populous nation. “The clock’s ticking.”
Modi’s alliance gains majority in early count, but falls far short of landslide
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s alliance has a majority in early vote counting trends, but the numbers as they stand at the moment are well short of the landslide predicted in exit polls.
Only about 10%-15% of the total votes have been counted so far, according to Indian TV channels.
BJP alone accounts for nearly 250 of the seats in which the NDA is leading, compared to the 303 it won in 2019. Its bloc, the NDA, needs to win at lest 359 to gain the two thirds majority that would allow it to change the constitution. Modi has set a goal of winning 400 seats.
Trends have also showed Modi leading, then trailing and leading again in his seat in the Hindu holy city of Varanasi.
The first votes counted are postal ballots, which are paper ballots, mostly cast by troops serving outside their home constituencies or officials away from home on election duty.
This year, postal votes were also offered to voters over 85 years of age and people with disabilities to allow them to vote from home.
The chief minister of India’s capital New Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal, surrendered to prison authorities on Sunday as the interim bail granted by the country’s top court in a corruption case ended, his party officials said.
Kejriwal, a firebrand politician who has been a vocal opponent of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was arrested by the federal financial crime-fighting agency in March in connection with alleged corruption in the awarding of liquor licences.
Kejriwal has denied the allegations.
Last month the Supreme Court granted Kejriwal bail until 1 June, the last day of India‘s nationwide seven-phase vote, on condition he returned to pre-trial detention on June 2.
“I was given a 21-day (relief) by the Supreme Court. These 21 days were unforgettable,” he said before returning to jail.
“I did not waste even a minute. I campaigned to save the country,” he said.
Hannah Ellis-Petersen
Modi’s decade in power has seen the government accused by rights groups of growing authoritarianism and pursuing Hindutva [Hindu-first] policies that have eroded the rights and freedoms of minorities, in particular India’s 200 million Muslims.
As the BJP is expected to march on with its Hindu nationalist agenda if re-elected, political observers have pointed to the mountainous holy state of Uttarakhand as a window on what a Modi third term could mean for India’s fragile secular democracy.
For centuries, Uttarakhand has been known as the “land of the gods’’. Stretching high up into the Himalayas, the state is home to tens of thousands of Hindu temples and some of the holiest Hindu pilgrimage sites. It is also here that the BJP government has accused of weaponising Uttarakhand’s sacred status for politics, making the state a “laboratory” for some of the most extreme rightwing policies and rhetoric targeting the Muslim minority.
When will we know the final results?
If you’re just tuning in: Counting began just over two hours ago, at 8:00 am (02.30 GMT), in key centres in each state, with the data fed into computers.
Votes were cast on electronic voting machines, so the tally will likely be rapid, with results expected within hours.
“People should know about the strength of Indian democracy”, chief election commissioner Rajiv Kumar said Monday, vowing there was a “robust counting process in place”.
India’s largest ever election was staggering in its size and logistical complexity, with voters casting their ballots in megacities New Delhi and Mumbai, as well as in sparsely populated forest areas and in the high-altitude territory of Kashmir, AFP reports.
India’s major TV networks have reporters outside each counting centre, competing to flash results for each of the 543 elected seats in the lower house of parliament.
In past years, key trends have been clear by mid-afternoon with losers conceding defeat, even though full and final results may only come late on Tuesday night.
Celebrations are expected at the headquarters of Modi’s BJP if the results reflect exit poll predictions. The winning post is a simple majority of 272 seats, and the BJP won 303 at the last polls in 2019.
India’s election by the numbers
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Nearly 970 million people, more than 10% of the world’s population, were eligible to vote. India, with a population of 1.428 billion, is the world’s most populous country after overtaking China last year.
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Turnout averaged 66% across the seven phases, according to official data, which means 642 million people voted: the most in any election in history worldwide. It was a 1% lower turnout than the 2019 elections.
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543: the number of seats up for grab in the Lok Sabha or lower house.
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272: the number of seats needed for a simple majority.
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400 seats: that is the number of seats the Modi-led NDA alliance is hoping to win – almost 75%, well above the two-thirds majority that would allow the NDA to make changes to India’s constitution.
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181: the number of seats the opposition INDIA alliance needs to win to prevent a two-thirds majority.
Modi is now back in the lead in his seat of Varanasi, according to India’s electoral commission. The NDA bloc is currently leading in 304 seats to the INDIA bloc’s 207 (which, for the moment, means the NDA does not have the two-thirds majority it so desperately wants).
Why would a third term for Modi be historic?
Hannah Ellis-Petersen
According to a flurry of exit polls released on Saturday night, Modi and his Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) are looking at a decisive win and may even gain seats to win a two-thirds majority in parliament, which would allow the government to make far-reaching amendments to the constitution.
It would be a historic achievement for Modi, India’s strongman prime minister, whose Hindu nationalist politics have significantly re-shaped India’s secular democracy over the past decade.
No prime minister since Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first post-independence premier, has won three consecutive terms.
Hannah Ellis-Petersen
The Facebook and Instagram owner Meta approved a series of AI-manipulated political adverts during India’s election that spread disinformation and incited religious violence, according to a report shared exclusively with the Guardian in May.
Facebook approved adverts containing known slurs towards Muslims in India, such as “let’s burn this vermin” and “Hindu blood is spilling, these invaders must be burned”, as well as Hindu supremacist language and disinformation about political leaders.
Another approved advert called for the execution of an opposition leader they falsely claimed wanted to “erase Hindus from India”, next to a picture of a Pakistan flag.
The adverts were created and submitted to Meta’s ad library – the database of all adverts on Facebook and Instagram – by India Civil Watch International (ICWI) and Ekō, a corporate accountability organisation, to test Meta’s mechanisms for detecting and blocking political content that could prove inflammatory or harmful during India’s six-week election.
According to the report, all of the adverts “were created based upon real hate speech and disinformation prevalent in India, underscoring the capacity of social media platforms to amplify existing harmful narratives”.
The adverts were submitted midway through voting:
Just to recap: only one seat has been won so far, and it was won by the BJP by default:
Before counting even began the BJP had won one seat, in the constituency of Surat, where Mukesh Dalal, from the ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), won the seat by default after every other candidate was either disqualified or dropped out of the race. It was the first time in 73 years that Surat’s candidate was appointed, not elected.
Guardian correspondent Hannah Ellis-Petersen reported at the time: Surat is not the only constituency in Gujarat to witness swathes of candidates going up against the BJP suddenly withdrawing from the race. In Gandhinagar, where Amit Shah, the home minister and prime minister Narendra Modi’s right-hand man, is running, 16 opposition candidates dropped out before last Tuesday’s voting.
Meanwhile Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi appears to be trailing in his own seat of Varanasi, according to India’s Electoral Commission.
The NDA bloc, meanwhile, is leading in 297 seats to the opposition INDIA bloc’s 208 seats.