Prime Minister Narendra Modi tendered his resignation as per protocol to President Ram Nath Kovind on Friday after the Union Cabinet passed a resolution to dissolve the 16th Lok Sabha.

“The President accepted the resignation and requested the Prime Minister and the Union Council of Ministers to continue in office till the new Government is formed,” read a tweet posted from the official Twitter handle of the President.

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The President accepted the resignation and requested the Prime Minister and the Union Council of Ministers to continue in office till the new Government is formed

— President of India (@rashtrapatibhvn) May 24, 2019

The PM is likely to take oath of office as the head of the new government on 30 May.

Union ministers, including External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar, Railway Minister Piyush Goyal, Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari and Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi, attended the meeting which was chaired by the PM.

The meeting was held a day after the announcement of results of the General Elections of 2019 which brought BJP-led NDA to power for a second consecutive time.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley was forced to skip the meeting due to ill health.

Following the Union Cabinet recommendation and PM’s resignation, the President will dissolve the present Lok Sabha, the term of which is ending on 3 June.

The 17th Lok Sabha has to be constituted before 3 June and the process to form a new House will be initiated when the three Election Commissioners meet the President in the next few days to hand over the list of newly elected members.

Counting for 542 Lok Sabha constituencies where elections were held began on Thursday. The BJP-led NDA returned to power with a thumping majority securing 351 seats. The BJP itself won 303 seats, its best performance till date.

The verdict made Prime Minister Narendra Modi only the third PM and the first BJP leader to return to power after completing a full term. He also became the first PM after Indira Gandhi to win with a clear majority.

A meeting of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) will be held on 25 May, when Modi will be formally elected leader of the coalition before the President will invite him to form the next government.

Reports say that the PM might visit Varanasi before his oath ceremony to thank the people of the parliamentary constituency from where he has been elected for the second time with a huge margin of 4,75,754 votes.

Modi polled a total of 6,69,602 votes while his nearest rival, Shalini Yadav of the Samajwadi Party (SP), got 1,93,848. Ajay Rai of the Congress got 1,51,800 votes.

In 2014, Modi won from Varanasi by a margin of 3.37 lakh votes. He is also likely to visit Gandhinagar to take blessings of his mother Heera Ben.