Gandhinagar: Union Home Minister and senior BJP leader Amit Shah has secured a landslide victory in the Gandhinagar Lok Sabha seat in Gujarat winning by a massive margin of 7,44,716 votes against his nearest Congress rival Sonal Ramanbhai Patel.
Shah got 1,10,972 votes in total, while Patel received 2,66,256 votes. In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, Amit Shah won from Gandhinagar Lok Sabha seat by a huge margin of more than 5.57 lakh votes.
BJP's key strategist Shah is credited for shaping many electoral outcomes of the party and also considered the chief architect of its meteoric rise under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi but in this Lok Sabha polls, things did not go according to plan.
While Shah won the Gandhinagar seat by a massive margin, BJP fell short of getting a majority to be able to form its government at the Centre on its own with the party winning 240 seats, far below the majority mark.
The BJP will have to depend heavily on its partners in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), especially the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and the Janata Dal (United), to form a government. Such an unexpected electoral outcome of the BJP took many by surprise and defied all the projections of most of the exit polls and also the party's 'abki baar 400 par' slogan.
A party needs to secure at least 272 Lok Sabha seats out of 543 to form its government at the Centre.
Gandhinagar, A High-profile Seat
One of the 26 Lok Sabha seats in Gujarat, Gandhinagar is arguably a high profile seat given Amit Shah's candidature from here. The seat has traditionally been a stronghold of the BJP with the saffron party candidates of the likes of former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Deputy Prime Minister LK Advani and now Amit Shah holding fort for the BJP from the seat since 1989.
While Amit Shah has now won three terms from Gandhinagar, LK Advani held the seat for six terms until he was succeeded by Amit Shah in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. Gandhinagar Lok Sabha seat comprises seven assembly segments--all held by the BJP-- and includes part of Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar districts of Gujarat.
2024 Polling: Voting for the Gandhinagar Lok Sabha seat of Gujarat was held in the 3rd phase of Lok Sabha election 2024 on May 7. According to the Election Commission of India, the seat recorded a voter turnout of 59.80 percent. Pertinently, all 25 of 26 Lok Sabha seats went to the polls in the 3rd phase itself. BJP candidate for Surat Lok Sabha seat, Mukesh Dalal was elected unopposed after Congress candidate Nilesh Kumbhani's nomination was rejected by the election authorities during the nomination phase.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, Amit Shah registered a thumping win against Congress candidate Dr C J Chavda by more than 5.57 lakh votes. In the 2014 Lok Sabha election, former Deputy Prime Minister LK Advani defeated then Congress candidate Kiritbhai Ishvarbhai Patel by over 4.83 lakh vote margin.
