Indian prime minister Narendra Modi has won the Varanasi Lok Sabha seat for a third time, NDTV reported on Tuesday.
Modi has beaten the Congress' Ajay Rai by over 1.5 lakh votes. In third place was the Bahujan Samaj Party's Ather Jamal Lari, who finished nearly 5.8 lakh behind the PM.
Earlier on Tuesday, Ajay Rai - who has contested and lost each of the past three general elections from the temple town - threatened (briefly) to cause, perhaps, the biggest shock in Indian electoral history.
In the initial rounds of counting, Ajay Rai was leading Modi by 6,223 votes.
As the day wore on, though, the PM stretched his legs and disappeared into the distance. Modi polled over 55 per cent of the votes in the 2014 and 2019 election.
