At least 15 Muslim candidates have clinched Lok Sabha seats across the country out of the 78 who were fielded to contest the general polls this time.

The winners included former Indian cricketer and T20 World Cup champion Yusuf Pathan from Baharampur.

He was fielded against Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury.

In 2019, 115 Muslim candidates were fielded by various political outfits.

Congress candidate Imran Masood from Saharanpur while Samajwadi Party's Iqra Choudhary clinched Kairana.

Afzal Ansari, the incumbent MP from Ghazipur, managed to retain it by grabbing 5.3 lakh votes.

AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi won the Hyderabad seat.

Mohammad Haneefa, an independent candidate from Ladakh, won the seat by winning  27,862 votes.

In Jammu and Kashmir, where former CMs Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti were defeated, Independent candidate Abdul Rashid Sheikh won the Baramulla  seat.

Samajwadi Party's Mohibbullah won the Rampur seat in UP by winning 4,81,503 votes.

In Sambhal, Zia Ur Rehman won with a margin of 1.2 lakh votes.

Anantnag-Rajouri seat in Jammu and Kashmir went to  Mian Altaf Ahmad of the National Conference.

NC candidate Aga Syed Ruhullah Mehdi won the Srinagar seat.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday returned for a rare third consecutive term in office with his allies, but fell short of an absolute majority for his BJP, in an election that gave a new lease of life to a Congress-led disparate Opposition bloc- INDIA-  as the anti-Modi union halted the saffron juggernaut to under 300.

Modi, who is set to be the second Prime Minister after Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru to return to office for third consecutive term, had kickstarted the campaign for his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) setting the target for 370 seats and 400 for the NDA alliance.

Quite contrary to the "Abki bar 400 par" or "400 plus seats this time" slogan, Modi's BJP failed to achieve the majority mark (272) on its own, paving way for a return of a coalition government trend after a decade.