MUMBAI: As the dusk sets on the historic day in Indian history, soon-to-be India’s fourteenth Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, thanked the people of Vadodara (Baroda) for giving him a record margin of 5.7 lakh votes.

While the Congress accepted its humiliating defeat, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is busy giving out laddoos to people.

Even though early leads suggested that BJP was way ahead of other parties, by afternoon all doubts were abolished. At the time of filing this report (7:18 pm) while NDA had secured 337 seats, BJP alone had 283 seats, way past the magical figure of 272. On the other hand, UPA managed only 58 seats, while Congress put up a disappointing figure of 45 seats.

The Congress saw a resounding defeat as it barely managed to get a few seats while retaining its main seats of Amethi (Rahul Gandhi) and Rae Bareily (Sonia Gandhi).

It is after 30 years that a party achieved the feat of having a thumping majority to lead the Lok Sabha.  BJP saw clean sweeps in the states of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Delhi and Goa while other states had clear majority. There were a few states like Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Tripura, Sikkim, Odisha and Manipur,where the party couldn’t cement a strong hold.

The election which saw many firsts has already gone down in the history as the election of the century.