With the BJP on course to win, it's safe to expect more of the 'Modi jacket'.

The sleeveless waistcoat that is typical of Indian men's fashion is actually called the Nehru jacket. It's named after India's first Prime Minister, the dapper Jawaharlal Nehru, who belonged to the Congress party.

But it's begun to look a little different.

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Of course, the Congress had its version too.

Image source, EPA

It certainly looks on course to do so - the BJP and its allies got 336 seats in 2014.

Soutik Biswas
India Correspondent

Image source, Getty Images

The leads are increasingly clear - the BJP is heading to a landslide victory. So what does this tell us?

Firstly, we see that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s charisma has remained intact.

He remains the BJP's main vote-getter, and his assertion that a vote for his party was actually a vote for him seems to have worked.

Secondly, backed by enormous resources, the BJP’s organisational machinery, employing all modern methods of communication, is now difficult to beat.

We also see that the opposition has failed to build an alternative narrative to take on BJP’s campaign, which deftly combines nationalism, development and religious polarisation.

The Congress needs to reinvent itself to take on a powerful and committed adversary like the BJP. It will need to become a much more hard-working party, and need to grow its own regional leaders and grassroots networks.

Lack of jobs in cities and villages are not enough to win elections against a powerful trope like nationalism which Modi has been able to mine well.

Women make up nearly half of India's 900 million registered voters, but they are still poorly represented in the country's law-making bodies.

One political party, the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal state, is trying to redress the balance - 41% of the candidates it nominated were female.

And Mahua Moitra, the party's national spokeswoman and a member of the state assembly since 2016, is among the 17 women who made it to the party's list of 42 general election nominees.

In India, only 11% of members of parliament are women, and in state assemblies it's 9%.

A bill to reserve 33% of seats for women in parliament and regional assemblies has been pending since 1996, so the decision by the Trinamool Congress - led by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee - to give 41% of her party nominations to women has created a huge buzz.

The BBC's Geeta Pandey travelled to the state of West Bengal to follow Ms Moitra on her campaign trail. You can read more about that here.

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In case you're just joining us, here's a quick recap of everything we know so far.

• The BJP looks set for a second consecutive landslide victory
• Together with its allies, it looks as though it will win more than 300 seats in India's 543-seat parliament
• Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who remains the main vote-getter for the BJP, is comfortably ahead in his constituency of Varanasi, the ancient city in northern India
• The Congress and its allies are struggling to retain leads in even 100 seats. It's leader Rahul Gandhi is floundering even in his home constituency of Amethi, a party stronghold for decades

The campaign’s biggest buzzword has probably been “chowkidar”, a Hindi term meaning "watchman".

Initially, Prime Minister Narendra Modi used the term in speeches, telling people that he was their chowkidar- someone who looks out for them and serves them.

But in April, he upped the ante by changing his Twitter handle to "Chowkidar Narendra Modi" - prompting other senior members of his cabinet and the governing Bharatiya Janata Party to do the same.

And at one point he even addressed a crowd of 250,000 "watchmen" - real security guards - across the country via audio link.

The "chowkidar" theme can be said to have proverbially broken India's internet with memes, tweets and posts galore. During the campaign, many BJP supports changed their social media handles and pictures to include the word.

Opposition parties couldn’t avoid the word either - even when Rahul Gandhi said: “Chowkidar Chor Hain" (The watchman is a thief), he was essentially playing by Mr Modi's rules.

We did wonder what real security guards thought of this chowkidar business though, so we asked them:

The BJP is coasting to victory but the southern state of Tamil Nadu appears to have eluded the party - again.

It contested five of the state's 39 seats in alliance with the governing AIADMK party, a regional heavyweight. And it's not looking good for either party.

While the BJP is not even coming second, the AIADMK is leading in only one seat so far.

But that hasn't stopped the party's supporters in the state from celebrating its wins from elsewhere.

In 2014, the state was swept by the Jayalalitha-led AIADMK which won 37 seats. And the DMK, led by her longstanding regional rival M Karunanidhi, suffered one of its most humiliating defeats.

This time, however, the opposition DMK party seems to be headed for a landslide.

Image source, AFP

This is the first election since the deaths of Jayalalitha and Karunanidhi, who died within a year of each other.

The two - and their turbulent rivalry - dominated the state's politics for decades. Without them, Tamil Nadu for the first time finds itself without tall and charismatic leaders for voters to rally around.

Even PM Modi, who draws large crowds in most part of the country, flounders in Tamil Nadu.

To find out why, read this analysis by Ayeshea Perera on Mr Modi's Tamil Nadu problem.

Sushma Swaraj, India's foreign minister has put out a tweet claiming victory for the BJP and thanking voters.

"Thank you very much for giving the prime minister-Bharatiya Janata Party such a great victory. I convey my heartfelt gratitude to my countrymen," the tweet, which is in Hindi, says.

This from the BBC's Divya Arya in Delhi.

... it's a very telling story.

Image source, Abhishek Madhukar/BBC News

Mr Modi, whose Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept to power in 2014, looks on course to keep his commanding majority.

The BJP is leading in at least 50 seats in the bellwether state of Uttar Pradesh (UP). The leads in the state is crucial for the party where it was up against a powerful alliance of regional Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).

The BJP won 71 out of 80 seats in the state, and it helped the party comfortably form the government.

This time, the former regional rivals came together to take on the BJP and they were expected to win more seats than the governing party.

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The expectation was down to caste calculations. The SP has traditionally commanded the support of the Yadav and Muslim communities, while the BSP has long been considered to be the party of the Dalits (formerly untouchables). The BJP's vote share was 42% in 2014, followed by the SP's 22% and the BSP's 19%.

So it was expected that the regional parties' combined vote share this would be enough to trump the BJP.

But the BJP banked on Mr Modi's popularity in the state. He consistently attacked the regional alliance as an "unnatural one" and reminded voters that the parties had bitterly fought against each other for more than two decades. He often said it was an "alliance of opportunism".

The strategy seems to have worked. It's often said that the way to power in Delhi goes through UP, and looking at the results, it does sound true.

Image source, Getty Images

It looks like PM Narendra Modi's BJP is headed for a comprehensive and certain win.

And this time - much like 2014 - Mr Modi remains the party's main vote-getter, says our correspondent Soutik Biswas.

This election is really about Mr Modi - analysts believed it was largely a referendum on his leadership.

But he has proved to be a polarising figure. While his supporters hail him as a “strongman” who leads India with the decisiveness it needs, his critics accuse him of being a Hindu nationalist hardliner who has done little to protect minorities.

If you want to understand why he is seen as divisive, read our correspondent’s deep dive into "Modi's India".

The BJP appears to be headed for a comprehensive win, which raises an inevitable question.

Did Priyanka Gandhi, the charismatic sister of Congress party president Rahul Gandhi, help?

Ever since she formally joined politics in February, Ms Gandhi has been on a whirlwind tour, campaigning mostly in Uttar Pradesh, writes our correspondent Geeta Pandey.

She directly took on PM Narendra Modi, criticising him for failing to create jobs, demonetisation, and denying farmers their rights.

She spent hours travelling in cars, trucks and even a boat, participated in dozens of road shows and addressed scores of rallies, grinning and waving at supporters, reaching out to shake hands, posing for selfies and pulling children of supporters into her lap.

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She is not running for parliament, but there has been obsessive media interest in everything she does.

Her visits to temples and shrines to woo the religious made prime-time news; during her visit to a village of snake charmers in her mother Sonia Gandhi's constituency Rae Bareli, she was photographed holding up snakes; and in central India, she was seen scaling a fence to mingle with the crowd at a rally while her security men raced to catch up with her.

But all that curiosity apart, it appears as if her efforts did not make that much of a difference to the fortunes of the Congress party.

Read more about Priyanka Gandhi here.

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Moon Moon Sen, a former actress and daughter of the legendary Bengali film heroine, Suchitra Sen, is a sitting MP from West Bengal's ruling Trinamool Congress.

But trends show her trailing in her seat, Asansol, in the coal belt. The BJP candidate, Babul Supriyo, who is the sitting MP for the constituency, is leading.

Mr Surpiyo is a celebrity in his own right - he is a well-known singer and TV actor.

She currently represents Bankura, which she won in 2014 after defeating an eight-time MP from the Communist party. So this is her first contest in Asansol.

She made headlines on polling day when she told journalists she was not aware of violence in Asansol because she woke up late.

Clashes were reported in some polling booths between TMC and BJP workers. But when Sen was asked about it, she said, “The hotel did not serve me bed tea in the morning, so I got up late.”

Soutik Biswas
India Correspondent

Despite a spirited and combative campaign by Rahul Gandhi and a progressive manifesto, the main opposition Congress looks on course to suffer its second successive drubbing at the hands of the BJP.

The lack of a grassroots workers network, over-dependence on the Gandhi family, lack of regional leaders and failure to stitch together enough coalitions have contributed to the debacle.

Once it was the leading pan-Indian party, which accommodated an array of castes and interests and pursued centrist politics. Now it looks like a rag-tag party, led by a fraying dynastic family.

Image source, Reuters

So has India’s Grand Old Party exhausted its potential and outlived its utility, as one commentator has said?

It’s too early to say, and political parties do reinvent themselves. Also the withering away of the Congress will lead to a vacuum where the BJP will quickly move in.

But one thing is clear: the Congress is fighting an existential battle against what is a powerful, motivated and moneyed adversary like the BJP, led by possibly the most charismatic Indian leader after Indira Gandhi.

The BJP has made a serious attempt to improve its performance on its own in West Bengal and Orissa, which alone account for 63 seats on the eastern coast - and it appears to have paid off.

The BJP campaigned hard in West Bengal like never before and they have shown results.

It won just two seats there in 2014, but has now increased that tally to between 15 and 20 seats, early leads show.

The BBC's Soutik Biswas says that the eastern state has always been a two-party state and with the Congress and Left withering away there, the BJP has stepped in to fill the gap.

Image source, Getty Images

And this performance comes amid a bitter battle between the two parties and their leaders - Mamata Banerjee, the firebrand West Bengal chief minister, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

They have much in common, writes Subir Bhaumik. Their working class origins, grassroots political experience, combative style and authoritarian tendencies.

While Mr Modi is backed by a rich party with seemingly unlimited resources, Ms Banerjee’s continues to project herself as a grassroots leader.

Given their image as the faces of their respective parties, they have relentlessly targeted each other. Mr Modi has called her "speedbreaker sister” - referring to her supposed opposition to development - while Ms Banerjee has labelled him “expiry PM", suggesting his time is up as India’s leader.

When Mr Modi and BJP president Amit Shah called her "the gangster queen", she retorted that they were “goons from Delhi”.

Never before has an election in West Bengal witnessed such no-holds barred verbal duels.