4. Abki baar Modi Sarkar slogan takes form: Congress defeated, BJP gets the baton.
During election rallies, the BJP had framed slogans of Abki baar Modi sarkar. Modi had confidently predicted victory. Even the Opposition, it appeared knew that they were fighting a long lost battle.
The results were declared on 16 May, fifteen days before the 15th Lok Sabha completed its constitutional mandate on 31 May 2014. The National Democratic Alliance, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party, won a sweeping victory, taking 336 seats.
The BJP itself won 31.0% of all votes and 282 (51.9%) of all seats. It is the first time since the 1984 Indian general elections that a party has won enough seats to govern without the support of other parties.
BJP's victory was largely credited to Narendra Modi and his right-hand man Amit Shah. The duo created history and will be remembered for their strategic planning. Amit Shah laid the road map and Modi executed the plan with hardly any deviation.
From September last year Narendra Modi who was back then Prime Ministerial candidate of the BJP addressed 437 big rallies, participated in a total 5827 public interfacing events and traveled over three lakh kilometres across 25 states in his attempt to connect himself to the people everywhere. During his campaign, Modi, pledged to speed government decision-making and remove bureaucratic hurdles that have slowed development.
Modi won from both seats he contested; defeating Arvind Kejriwal in Varanasi and Madhusudan Mistry of the Congress party in Vadodara (by a margin of 570,128 votes, the second highest ever).
He led the BJP-led NDA to a decisive victory in the general elections in which the ruling Indian National Congress suffered its worst ever defeat. Modi relinquished his Vadodara seat and chose Varanasi instead.
Modi effectively used social media like Twitter, Facebook and Google in his campaign, besides Google Hangouts and holograms for campaign appearances. He even posted a selfie on Twitter and his victory tweet emerged as the most retweeted in India.
The Congress party was worst hit by the outcome. Rahul Gandhi, who spearheaded his party's campaign proved to be utter disappointment for the party. To cap it all, people were spotted leaving between his speeches in some of the rallies.
All in all, the Congress party will remember 2014 as the blackest year in its history of existence since Independent India.
