Shankar Lalwani (L); Rakibul Hussain.
Credit: PTI, X/@rakibul_inc Photos
The 2024 Lok Sabha election results have brought forward many unexpected surprises. With the BJP now being reduced to 240 seats in the Lok Sabha, they will for the first time since Modi came to power in 2014, have to depend on coalition partners to prove their majority in the lower house of the Parliament.
As we try to analyse the results, it is interesting to know that a Congress MP-elect from Assam, Rakibul Hussain, has managed to win by the highest margin in the entire country—10,12,476 votes.
Indore's incumbent MP Shankar Lalwani of the BJP is the official topper winning margin of 11.72 lakh votes, but this was possible because the Congress candidate withdrew his candidature and the grand old party was not able to field a replacement in time.
On the other hand, Congress' I.N.D.I.A. partner Shiv Sena (UBT) have suffered a defeat by the lowest margin—48 votes—from the Mumbai North West constitunecy.
Here we take a look at the candidates who have the Lok Sabha elections with the highest margins:
Former Madhya Pradesh CM and BJP leader Shivraj Singh Chouhan won the Vidisha seat, trouncing his Congress rival Pratap Bhanu Sharma by 8,21,408 votes.
The earlier record of winning by the highest margin belonged to BJP's Pritam Munde, who won a bypoll in October of 2014 from Maharashtra's Beed by more than 6.96 lakh votes.
Patil, who is a three-term MP from Navsari, who held the record for the second-highest margin after winning by 6.89 lakh votes in 2019, has broken his own record this time around.
Union Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia won from Madhya Pradesh's Guna by more than 5.40 lakh votes.
Among other candidates who won by a margin of over 5 lakh votes are the BJP's Gujarat candidates Rajpalsingh Jadav from Panchmahal (5.09 lakh) and Hemang Joshi from Vadodara (5.82 lakh), its Bhopal nominee Alok Sharma (5.01 lakh) and Sudheer Gupta from Mandsour (over 5 lakh).
The BJP's Mahesh Sharma won from Uttar Pradesh's Gautam Buddha Nagar by 5.59 lakh votes while the saffron party's candidate from Raipur in Chattisgarh Brijmohan Agarwal secured a margin of 5.75 lakh.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi won by more than 1.52 lakh votes from Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi bettered Sonia Gandhi's 2019 victory margin from Raebareli in Uttar Pradesh, winning by more than 3.90 lakh votes.
Gandhi also won from Wayanad in Kerala by a margin of more than 3.64 lakh votes.
Former Tripura chief minister Biplab Kumar Deb of the BJP won from Tripura West by a margin of more than 6 lakh votes while Kriti Dev Debbarman of the saffron party won the Tripura East constituency by more than 4.86 lakh votes.
With PTI inputs