Congress leader Rahul Gandhi leading from Wayanad, Raebareli Lok Sabha seats

New Delhi, June 4: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is leading in the two Lok Sabha seats of Wayanad in Kerala and Raebareli in Uttar Pradesh as per very early leads as counting of votes for the 2024 general elections is underway.

Rahul Gandhi is leading from Kerala's Wayanad Lok Sabha seat with a margin of 8718 votes, according to Election Commission.

Rahul Gandhi is facing BJP leader K Surendran and CPI's Annie Raja in the constituency.

Rahul Gandhi is leading from Uttar Pradesh's Raebareli Lok Sabha seat with a margin of 2126 votes.

Thakur Prasad Yadav is contesting from the Bahujan Samaj Party.

The polling in Wayanad Lok Sabha constituency was held in the second phase on April 26 along with five other 19 constituencies of the state.

Around 642 million people voted in Lok Sabha elections held over seven phases in a mammoth six-week period. The counting of votes began starting with postal ballot papers amid tight security.

The Congress has fielded its sitting MP Rahul Gandhi, while, the CPI has fielded its senior leader, Annie Raja. The BJP left no stone unturned to establish its complete dominance in the 2024 elections and fielded Kerala State President K Surendran as a National Democratic Alliance (NDA) candidate from the constituency.

Meanwhile, Rahul Gandhi who is the current sitting MP of Wayanad, won the elections securing 706,367 votes, while LDF candidate PP Suneer secured 274,597 votes and BDJ (S) leader Tushar Vellapally got 78,816 votes in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Rahul Gandhi won from Wayanad with a huge margin of over 4.31 lakh votes- the highest margin in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls in Kerala. He secured 64.7 per cent vote share, defeating LDF candidate PP Suneer.

Annie Raja is the wife of CPI general secretary D Raja and holds the post of general secretary in the party's National Federation of Indian Women.

The counting for State Legislative Assemblies of 175 Assembly constituencies in Andhra Pradesh and 147 Assembly constituencies in Odisha and results of bypolls in 25 Assembly constituencies also began.

The Bharatiya Janata Party is eyeing a third straight term in power, while the Opposition under the umbrella of the INDIA bloc is seeking to wrest power from the ruling party.

Most exit polls predicted a straight term for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with quite a few of them projecting a two-thirds majority for the ruling BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

The Congress party and its allies dismissed the exit polls as "orchestrated" and a work of "fantasy", asserting that the opposition INDIA bloc will form the next government at the Centre.

Two polls predicted the BJP would also improve its numbers from the 303 seats it won in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. In the 2019 elections, NDA wrested 353 seats, of which the BJP won 303 alone. The Opposition's UPA got only 93 seats of which the Congress got 52.

Even before the counting of the votes, the Bharatiya Janata Party won one seat of Surat Lok Sabha.

The Lok Sabha elections for 543 seats of the lower house were held across seven phases.