The seven-phased Lok Sabha elections, the biggest democratic exercise in the world, is finally over. The counting of votes has begun. The results will reveal if the BJP government would return to power or not.

In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP had got full majority by winning 282 of the 543 seats in the lower house of parliament. The Indian National Congress had plummeted to its lowest tally in the national elections with just 44 seats in the bag. The two regional parties that had shined in the previous national elections were West Bengal's Trinamool Congress and Tamil Nadu's AIADMK. In West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress had won 34 out of 42 seats. The AIADMK, then led by late J Jayalalithaa, won 37 out of the 39 Lok Sabha constituencies in the Tamil Nadu.

Naveen Patnaik's Biju Janata Dal (BJD) was another regional party that scored a mammoth win in Odisha, bagging 20 out of 21 seats.

The biggest surprise in 2014 was Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party not winning a single seat. Akhilesh Yadav's Samajwadi Party had won in five constituencies in Uttar Pradesh. The two parties have contested the 2019 general election in an alliance.

The BJP had become the first party to gain majority on its own in three decades.

Around 90 crore people were eligible to vote in the general election this year, an increase of around 9 crore compared to the election in 2014.

The first phase of Lok Sabha elections on April 11 saw a voter turnout of 69.43 per cent. Sixty six per cent turnout was recorded in both the second phase (April 18) and the third phase of polling (April 23). The overall voter turnout in the fourth phase of the national elections (April 29) stood at 64 per cent. The fifth phase of polling, held on May 6, saw 57.33 per cent turnout. The voter turnout in phase 6 was 63.3 per cent.