Lok Sabha Election Results: Most exit polls have predicted a clean sweep for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the Hindi heartland. The states here – Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bihar – accounts for a significant seat share in the Lok Sabha.
Amid the counting of votes in the seven-phased Lok Sabha polls, all eyes are on the 13 bellwether seats spread across 7 states to gauge the winner at the national level. It is believed that the party winning these seats is usually the winner at the national level.
A bellwether seat is a constituency that gives an indication/trend for the region and also its impact on the national level.
These bellwether seats are Valsad, Banaskantha, Jamnagar and Anand (in Gujarat), Ambala, Faridabad, Karnala (in Haryana), Jammu, Udhampur (Jammu), Alwar (Rajasthan), Secunderabad (Telangana), Sasaram (Bihar) and Ranchi (Jharkhand).
All these constituencies voted for a party, which formed the government at the Centre.
Rajasthan’s Alwar seat voted for BJP (1999, 2019) and for Congress (2004, 2009).