Prime Minister Narendra Modi has won the Varanasi Lok Sabha seat for a third time even as the BJP-led NDA has failed to achieve the set target.
The Prime Minister has beaten the Congress’ Ajay Rai by over 1.5 lakh votes. Rai, who has contested and lost each of the past three elections from the temple town against Modi, had claimed victory.
As the vote counting began, Rai was leading Modi by 6,223 votes but later the Prime Minister won the seat with over 6.12 lakh votes.
However, delight over the Modi’s huge win has been marred by his party’s poor performance across Uttar Pradesh in this Lok Sabha election.
Also Read: China using resettlement villages to displace India at LAC
Since 2014, when Modi took over as Prime Minister for the first time, the BJP has been nearly unbeatable in UP.
Moreover, in the state elections in 2017, a Yogi Adityanath-led BJP scripted history by winning 312 of the state’s 403 Assembly seats.
Adityanath also claimed a second term in 2022, despite the party being heavily criticised over the farmers’ protests.
Similarly, the 2024 Lok Sabha election in the state was expected to be no different, at least according to exit pollsters, who projected big  win for the saffron party .
In the 2014 and 2019 elections, the BJP scooped up 71 and 62 seats. Exit polls predicted a repeat of the trend this time, but the trends so far hold true to the warning – exit polls don’t always get it right. Several rounds of counting are still left and the picture may change anytime.
One of the the biggest talking points in this polls was the construction of the grand Ram temple in Ayodhya of UP, a BJP poll promise since the 1980s, which the party supporters claimed would be the decisive factor in the Lok Sabha election.
However, the Ayodhya Ram Mandir failed to assert itself as the main factor even in Faizabad, the constituency it falls in.
