‘BJP lost Ayodhya, PM Narendra Modi lost credibility, must resign’: Mamata Banerjee on Lok Sabha election results

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday said Narendra Modi should resign as Prime Minister on moral grounds, as he had lost his credibility after the Lok Sabha election results in 2024 indicated that the Bharatiya Janata Party was struggling to reach its 400-seat target.

"... I am happy that the Prime Minister did not get the majority figure. The prime minister has lost credibility. He should resign immediately because he had said that this time they would cross 400 seats," Mamata Banerjee said at a press conference in Kolkata.

"...Even after causing so many atrocities, spending so much money, this arrogance of Modi ji and Amit Shah, the INDIA bloc has won and Modi has lost. They have even lost in Ayodhya," the Trinamool Congress supremo said.

Samajwadi Party candidate Awadhesh Prasad won in Faizabad parliamentary seat over his nearest BJP rival Lallu Singh. Singh is the sitting MP from Faizabad seat, which falls in the Ayodhya district.

Awadhesh Prasad was leading against Singh by a margin of 48,680 votes in Faizabad, according to EC figures at 5.10 pm.

The latest election trends in Ayodhya assume significance as the Ram temple of Ayodhya has been the fulcrum of BJP's politics in the 1990s, which had catapulted it significantly at the national level.

During campaigning, Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Barabanki and Hamirpur on May 17 had claimed that the Congress and the Samajwadi Party would run a bulldozer over the Ram temple if elected to power, and asked them to take lessons from Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on where bulldozers should be used instead.

On January 22, an idol of the new Ram Lalla was consecrated at the Ayodhya temple, in a landmark event led by the prime minister who also gave a clarion call to go beyond the grand mandir's construction to build the foundation of a "strong, capable and divine" India of the next 1,000 years.