Gandhinagar: The counting of votes has begun for 542 Lok Sabha seats. Voting took place in seven phases between April 11 to May 19. Gujarat, which has 26 Lok Sabha seats, went to polls in the third phase of election. Three hundred and seventy one candidates are in the fray.
This time, on Supreme Court's instruction to the Election Commission (EC), the Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips tally will also be taken into account while the votes are being counted. Paper slips of five VVPATs per assembly segment in every parliamentary segment will be counted. The vote tallying will begin after the last round of counting. This will thus delay the results by at least five hours or more.
Gujarat is the home-turf of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other top BJP leaders including Amit Shah, who contested the national election for the first time.
The exit polls predicted that it will be a clean sweep for the BJP in Gujarat and the BJP-NDA alliance will get 300+ seats across the country to easily form the government.
The final voter turnout in Gujarat is at 64.11 per cent, which is almost similar to the voter turnout in 2014.
For Gujarat, the ABP-CSDS exit poll predicts a massive victory for BJP in the state. It mentioned that the party is likely to grab 24 Lok Sabha seats while the rest two will go to Congress' kitty. The India Today-Axis My India exit poll says that the BJP will register victory in 25-26 seats. The IANS-CVOTER exit poll shows that the BJP is expected to retain 22 seats in Gujarat. The TimesNow-VMR predicts 23 seats for BJP in Gujarat while Today's Chanakya and IPSOS have given 25 seats each to BJP.
In the 2014 General election, BJP had won all the 26 seats.
