Counting of the 600+ million votes started at 8.00 am this morning and it was just a matter of hours before it was clear that the BJP-led NDA was coming back to power. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had been voted in for a second term.

Here's a quick look at the biggest winners and losers.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi chose to stand from just one constituency this time around - Varanasi - and was voted back with a margin of more than 4.5 lakh votes. Congratulations poured in from world leaders, including Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu, the UAE's Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan, and Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan. The Prime Ministers of Australia, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, and the Maldives also sent their congratulations, as did French President Emmanuel Macron. US lawmakers sent their wishes later in the evening.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had hedged his bets across the Congress bastion of Amethi and Wayanad in Kerala. He won the constituency in Kerala by a margin of close to 4 lakh votes. While the Election Commission was yet to declare the results for Amethi, Rahul Gandhi conceded the seat to his BJP rival and Union Minister Smriti Irani at a press conference in the evening.

BJP President Amit Shah – widely acknowledged as the architect of the 2014 victory – won by a margin of over 5.5 lakh votes from Gandhinagar in Gujarat. Shah received a hero’s welcome at the party headquarters in the afternoon, with party workers showering him with flowers. Gandhinagar has long been a BJP bastion, with former Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani having won it six times, the last in 2014 when he won by 4.3 lakh votes.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh scored an easy victory in Lucknow, defeating first-time candidate Poonam Sinha, wife of former BJP MP Shatrughan Sinha who joined the Congress. (Sinha himself was trailing Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad of the BJP in Patna Sahib.)

Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia lost Guna in an upset defeat to the BJP's Krishna Pal Singh by a margin of over 1.2 lakh votes. Scindia was the sitting MP from Guna in Madhya Pradesh which has more often than not sent a member of Gwalior's erstwhile royal family, starting with his grandmother, Vijayaraje Scindia, who first won it in 1957 as an MP of the Jan Sangh (which eventually evolved into the BJP). The seat moved to the Congress when her son, Madhavrao Scindia became a member of the Congress and was a nine-time MP before his death in a plane crash in 2001.

In Madhya Pradesh, BJP's Sadhvi Pragya Thakur defeated senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh in Bhopal, another BJP stronghold, by nearly 3 lakh votes.

Union Minister Giriraj Singh of the BJP scored another easy victory over JNU student leader and CPI candidate from Begusarai, Bihar, Kanhaiya Kumar.

Former Jammu & Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti lost Anantnag to National Conference candidate Hasnanin Masoodi.

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How the celebs fared

First-time BJP candidate and Bollywood megastar Sunny Deol won Gurdaspur in Punjab by a margin of 70,000 votes. He replaces another star, Vinod Khanna of the BJP, who lost his battle with cancer a few months ago.

Actor and BJP candidate Hema Malini retained her Mathura seat, defeating candidates from the Congress and the Rashtriya Lok Dal. Her actor husband Dharmendra, himself once an MP for the BJP from Bikaner, congratulated her much earlier in the day after trends showed that she was leading.

Singer Babul Supriyo of the BJP won Asansol, West Bengal, defeating actor Moon Moon Sen of the Trinamool Congress.

BJP candidate for Rampur (UP) Jaya Prada was trailing her Samajwadi Party rival Azam Khan.

Also read: Elections 2019 Wrap-up: Take a look at YourStory’s complete coverage of the elections