Seema Chishti 
1. Temple Run: The Ram Temple at Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh had been the centre of the BJP’s confidence that it had 2024 sealed. The Ram Temple was reduced to a vote-catching device by the party. Narendra Modi, Adityanath and the BJP as a whole asked for votes directly for Ram Mandir, but it lost Faizabad. Samajwadi Party’s Awadhesh Prasad, a Dalit candidate in an unreserved seat, beat BJP’s oldest name in the area associated with electoral success post the Ayodhya movement, Lallu Singh, by 54,567 votes. Deep symbolism here of how the Ram Temple as a ‘card’ floundered.
2. Margin Utility: Narendra Modi’s margin in Varanasi (1,52,513 votes) is half of what Rahul Gandhi’s is in Rae Bareli (3,900,30 votes). It is even less than by what Kishori Lal Sharma wrested Amethi back for the Congress from Smriti Irani. Sharma won by 1,67,196 votes. It should serve to end the divinity claim made by Modi on the Ganga, when he went to file his nomination.
3. Dhubri is Done: The seat in Assam, a byword for the ‘Muslim’ vote in the country, and certainly in Assam, was meant to be about the salience of the AIUDF, Badruddin Ajmal’s party. This was used to say that the Muslim vote is cutting itself off from mainstream parties and moving to ‘Muslim parties’. But the record margin of Ajmal’s defeat, by 10,12,476 or 10.1 lakh votes – to his Congress rival Rakibul Hussain – stands for another story.
Also read: Akhilesh Yadav’s ‘PDA’ Trumps Modi-Adityanath’s Hindutva in Uttar Pradesh
4. Not God but God’s Own Country – Kerala: The BJP has opened its account in the state with Thrissur, for the first time in independent India. Suresh Gopi has won by 74, 686 votes. This, with 16.68% votes for the BJP, evens out a naïve idea of north-versus south. It is not as simple as that and BJP’s strength in terms of deep RSS networks and persuasion is beginning to show. It should ring alarm bells for non-BJP parties, so far sanguine and dismissive of BJP possibly making gains. In neighbouring Tamil Nadu, BJP relying on communal passion along with a Gounder leader, K. Annamalai, and an OBC-led push should not again be taken lightly. The Tamil Nadu vote share for the BJP is a little over 11%.
5. Vote Share in the Hindi Belt: BJP’s vote share is down in UP and Bihar by almost 8% in each state. But how that translates into seats is dramatically different. In UP, the BJP has 33 seats out of 80, and in Bihar, NDA is at 29 out of 40. In Rajasthan, the BJP vote share is down by 12% from last time.
6. Not Allowed to Say NOTA: Nearly 16.55 lakh voters could not vote. This is the number of voters in Surat, Gujarat, where after a series of intriguing events, the BJP candidate, Mukesh Dalal, was the only one left standing, before polling day and he was declared elected. Then there is the other seat of Indore, from where several reports tracked how candidates were coerced and otherwise ‘persuaded’ to leave the fray. There was no Congress candidate here in the fray, and a Socialist Unity Centre of India, SUCI candidate revealed to The Wire, how he, along with other independents, was pushed to step down. But he did not buckle. He, Comrade Ajit Singh, secured 7179 votes. But NOTA secured 2,18,674 votes.
Also read: Mandal Plus Bounces Back to Fell Kamandal, Restricts BJP Below Half-way Mark
7. No Sabka Vishwas: In Kashmir, India’s only erstwhile Muslim-dominated state, BJP doesn’t dare put up any candidates at all. In Buddhist Ladakh, the BJP candidate has finished third. In Mizoram, deeply affected by the violence directed at Kuki-Zos perhaps, the BJP candidate has finished fourth. In Christian Nagaland, the BJP had no candidate. In Sikh-dominated Punjab, the BJP has scored a cipher and occupies the number two spot only on three seats. In Lakshadweep, Muslim dominated, the BJP had no candidate.
8. Banswara and Banaskantha Watch: Narendra Modi made his first hate speech in this round of campaigning on April 21 in Rajasthan’s Banswara, saying, “When they (the Congress) were in power, they said that Muslims had the first right to the properties of the state. This means that they would collect these properties and give them to the ones who have more kids (insinuating Muslims). They will give it to the ghusapethyon (infiltrators). Do you want to give away your hard-earned money to the intruders? This is what the Congress manifesto says — the amount of gold owned by our mothers and daughters will be measured, collected and distributed. They will distribute this wealth among those… the Manmohan Singh government had said Muslims had the first right to the properties. These urban naxals will not even spare the mothers and sisters or their mangalsutra. They will go that far.” The BJP was trounced by Raj Kumar Roat, of Bharat Adivasi Party, a constituent of INDIA, and by 2,47,504 votes.
In Banaskantha, Gujarat, Modi invoked “two buffaloes”, on May 1. He said that if you have two buffaloes, INDIA would snatch one and give it to their vote bank. The seat has been won by Beniben Nagaji Thakor of the Congress by 30, 406 votes. It is the first seat won by any non-BJP party in Gujarat’s Lok Sabha for a decade.
9.23. Modi stalled electorally: In 23 years of electoral politics for Narendra Modi, this is the first time, Modi has fallen way short of a majority, of the half-way mark. This has a bearing on the cult he heads, the strong brand of divisive politics he has championed in the state of Gujarat from 2002 and then nationally from 2014. And given that with 67 mentions of his name in a 48-page manifesto, he made this a referendum about himself, the losses too are his.
Read all of The Wire’s reporting on and analysis of the 2024 election results here.