The BJP has taken an early lead as counting of the ballot for the 542 Lok Sabha seats gathered pace across the country. The BJP was leading in over 300  seats and the Congress was ahead in over 100 seats at around 9:30 am. The seven-phase election, in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi is seeking a second term, saw 8,000 candidates fighting for 542 seats. This is for the first time in a Lok Sabha election results that results of voting machines will be matched with VVPATs or slips generated by paper trail machines.
Exit polls predicted that the BJP will win almost as many seats as it did in 2014 and form a government comfortably.  The poll of polls, an aggregate of exit polls, gives the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) 302 of 543 seats and the Congress and its allies 122.