Of the 303 seats the BJP won in 2019, it retained 208 this time, lost 92, and gave three to its allies — Janata Dal (United), Janata Dal (Secular), and Rashtriya Lok Dal — who won a seat each. It won 32 new seats in 2024 pushing its tally to 240.
An analysis of the 92 seats it lost shows telling patterns. At least 29 were constituencies reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. The party suffered its biggest loss in Uttar Pradesh, which accounted for 29 of these 92 seats. The other states where the saffron party faced major setbacks were Maharashtra and Rajasthan, where the party lost 16 and 10 seats respectively. Besides, the party also faced defeat in 8 constituencies each in Karnataka and West Bengal.
The BJP tally was halved in Haryana where the party lost 5 seats. It lost 5 seats in Bihar, 3 in Jharkhand, 2 in Punjab and one each in Assam, Chandigarh, Daman & Diu, Gujarat, Ladakh (it was part of Jammu & Kashmir in 2019), and Manipur. In all, the BJP lost 92 seats across 15 states and Union Territories.
The spread of BJP’s loss was even in general category seats as well as reserve categories. Of the 92 seats the BJP lost, 63 were in General, 18 reserved for SCs and 11 for STs.
These seats were mostly in rural areas but included urban seats like Mumbai North Central and Mumbai North East, where Congress and its allies defeated the BJP.
Of the 92 seats, 11 constituencies — Aurangabad, Dumka, Lohardaga, Gulbarga, Raichur, Gadchiroli-Chimur, Barmer, Karauli-Dholpur, Banda, Chandauli, and Fatehpur — were in the Aspirational Districts, the poorest districts of the country.
In the Aspirational Districts too, the Congress and the SP hit the BJP the most, by winning 6 and 3 seats of the 11 seats lost by the BJP in these districts.
Of the 92 seats, the Congress wrested a maximum 42 seats from the BJP, which included 9 in Maharashtra, 8 in Rajasthan and 4 in Uttar Pradesh. The states where BJP lost the most number of seats.
The Samajwadi Party won 25 seats against the BJP, and all of them were in UP. The All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) in Bengal, and Nationalist Congress Party-Sharad Pawar (NCP-SP) in Maharashtra bagged 8 and 5 seats respectively. The other parties who won against BJP in those 92 seats, were Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Bharat Adivasi Party, Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) (Liberation) – CPI(ML)(L), Communist Party of India (Marxist), Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, Nationalist Congress Party – Sharadchandra Pawar, Rashtriya Janata Dal, and Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray).
In 2019, 77 of the BJP’s 303 seats came from reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Of these, the saffron party and its allies could retain only 48 seats in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, while the remaining 29 seats were won by the opposition parties.
While the BJP faced a debacle in these 92 seats, it won 32 new constituencies across 11 states and Union Territories, which helped the saffron party to take its overall tally to 240.
Of these 32 new seats, a maximum of 12 came from Odisha, 4 from Telangana, three each from Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, two from West Bengal and one each from Bihar, Dadra & Nagar Haveli, Chhattisgarh, Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, and Kerala. Of these 32 seats, only three were reserved for Scheduled Castes and 5 for Scheduled Tribes.
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