Early trends show comfortable lead for BJP, Rahul ahead in Wayanad

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has taken an early lead as counting of the ballot for the 542 Lok Sabha seats gathered pace across the country began on Thursday.

The BJP was leading in 206 seats while the Indian National Congress was placed second in the list with 55 seats according to officials trends of 371 constituencies.

In Uttar Pradesh, BJP is surging on 39 seats, while BSP and SP are ahead on eight and two seats, respectively. Congress is leading on one seat out of the total 80, maximum for a state in the country.

BJP is leading in 22 seats and Congress in 2 out of the total 26 seats in Gujarat, the home state of Prime Minister Modi.

Shiv Sena was leading on 13 seats, while Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam was ahead on 13, at 9:30 am.

Other parties such as Shiromani Akali Das, Mizo National Front and Jammu and Kashmir National Conference are leading in one seat.

According to early trends, Congress president Rahul Gandhi is leading in Kerala's Wayanad constituency by over 5,000 votes.UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi is also leading from Uttar Pradesh's Raebareli.

Congress leader Digvijaya Sigh is trailing behind BJPs Praygya Thakur by over 3,000 votes in Bhopal. Besides, Jyotiraditya Scindia from Guna and Vivek Tankha from Jabalpur are trailing.

In the national capital, BJP's Ramesh Bidhuri is leading from South Delhi and BJP's Parvesh Verma is ahead from West Delhi.

The Lok Sabha polls that commenced on April 11 and wrapped up on May 19, saw approximately 900 million voters exercising their franchise and deciding the fate of 7,928 candidates across 542 seats in the country. Out of those candidates, 724 were women and four were transgenders.