[31] Modi denied these allegations, and blamed Congress and the communists for undermining institutions including the police, the CBI, and the CAG, and cited the murder of BJP activists in Kerala and Madhya Pradesh.

[34][verification needed] According to The Times of India, the major economic achievements of the incumbent NDA government included an inflation rate less than 4 per cent, the GST reform, and the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code.

Its programs, in recent years, that have positively touched many among the Indian masses, include the Jan Dhan Yojana, rural cooking gas and electricity for homes.

[39] The opposition's election campaign has claimed that both the demonetisation and GST law have "seriously hit small business, farmers and casual labour", states The Times of India.

[44] In response to the 2019 Pulwama attack, the Indian Air Force conducted airstrikes inside Pakistan — for the first time since the 1971 Indo-Pakistani war.

[45] According to the Pew Research Center, both before and after the outbreak of recent India-Pakistan tensions, their 2018 and 2019 surveys suggest that the significant majority of the voters consider Pakistan as a "very serious threat" to their country, and terrorism to be a "very big problem".

[46][47] According to the Pew Research Center, a majority of Indian voters consider the lack of employment opportunities as a "very big problem" in their country.

According to Business Today, this report is the "first comprehensive survey on employment conducted by a government agency after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced demonetisation move in November 2016".

BJP highlights that its "Kisan Samman Nidhi" helps the small farmers at the time of seed planting through a direct deposit of ₹6000 to their accounts.

[62] According to the Business Standard and the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization, India has witnessed record crop harvests in recent years including 2017 when its farmers grew more foodgrains than ever before.

[65][66] During the election campaign, its leaders mentioned the Emergency of 1975, the nepotism, corruption and widespread abuses of human rights under the Congress rule in the past.

According to the report, while BJP has also nominated candidates from political dynasties, its better public relations operation "can leap to its defence when attacked on the same grounds".

[65][71] In April 2019, raids conducted by the Income Tax Department found bundles of unaccounted for cash amounting to ₹281 crore (US$32 million), along with liquor and documentary evidence in premises of people with close connections to Madhya Pradesh chief minister Kamal Nath of the Congress.

[75][76] According to The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, the election attracted a systematic attempt to spread misinformation through social media.

[77][78] Facebook said that over a hundred of these advocacy accounts spreading disinformation were traced to "employees of the Pakistani military public relations wing".

[77][78] Political parties spent over ₹53 crore (US$6.1 million) with the largest spending by BJP on digital platforms for online ads.

[79] According to a study by Vidya Narayanan and colleagues at the Oxford Internet Institute, social media was used by all the major parties and alliances, and all of them linked or posted divisive and conspiratorial content and images.

[81] About 50,000 fake news stories were published during the recent Lok Sabha elections and shared 2 million times, according to a study conducted by fact-checking startup Logically.

[82] In September 2019, the BBC launched the Trusted News Initiative to help combat election-related disinformation, citing the 2019 general elections as a motivating factor.

[83] Election Commission curtailed West Bengal campaigning by one day, after a bust of 19th century Bengali icon Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar was vandalised during 7th phase poll violence.

[97][98] Some of its highlights:[96][98][99] Other national and regional parties released their manifestos too: Several organisations offered varying estimates for the cost of the election campaign.

[114] According to the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), an election watchdog, in the financial year 2017–18 BJP received ₹4,370,000,000 (US$50 million), about 12 times more donations than Congress and five other national parties combined.

[122] With the exception of 2014, no single party has won the majority of seats in the Lok Sabha since 1984, and therefore, forming alliances is the norm in Indian elections.

It formed alliances with regional parties in Jammu and Kashmir, Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Jharkhand, and Kerala.

In Tamil Nadu, it was part of the Secular Progressive Alliance led by DMK while it was allied with the Jana Sena Party in Andhra Pradesh.

[179] Other opposition parties and political leaders such as Sharad Pawar,[180] Mamata Banerjee and Omar Abdullah,[181] congratulated PM Modi and BJP for their victory.

On 20 November 2019 the Association for Democratic Reforms filed a petition with the Supreme Court of India over alleged ballot-counting discrepancies in the Lok Sabha voting and seeking a probe by the ECI.

[182] The leaders of Afghanistan, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burundi, Canada, China, Comoros, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Iceland, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lesotho, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Malaysia, Maldives, Malta, Mexico, Mongolia, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, Netherlands, Nicaragua, North Korea, Nigeria, New Zealand, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Portugal, Qatar, Russia, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Seychelles, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Sri Lanka, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Switzerland, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam, Zambia, and Zimbabwe congratulated Narendra Modi and the BJP on their victory.

[183] The benchmark BSE Sensex and Nifty50 indices hit intraday record highs and the Indian rupee strengthened after the exit polls and on the day the election results were announced.