Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leaders Amit A Shah, Shivraj Singh Chouhan and G Kishan Reddy filed nomination papers for the Lok Sabha elections on Friday, April 19, 2024.
Amit Shah, a source tells us, wants to win the Gandhinagar Lok Sabha seat by 900,000 votes this election. All photographs: ANI Photo
This is the second Lok Sabha election Amitbhai will be contesting from Gandhinagar, a constituency which was represented by Lal Kishenchand Advani for five elections from 1998 to 2014. Advani also won the Gandhinagar seat in the 1991 Lok Sabha election.
In 2019, Amitbhai polled 894,000 votes or 69.67% of the votes cast.
The BJP has won the Gandhinagar seat since 1989. There's no doubt that Amitbhai will retain the seat, the question is by what margin.
His rival in 2019, Chatursinh Javanji Chavda, polled 26.29% of the votes -- Chavda joined the BJP in February 2024!
The Congress has fielded Sonal Patel, an architect, against Shah this time, the first time it has fielded a lady candidate since 1989.
Vidisha is not alien electoral parliamentary terrain for Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who was denied another term as Madhya Pradesh chief minister even though he led the BJP to victory in the November 2023 assembly election.
Mamaji, as he is known in MP, represented Vidisha in the Lok Sabha from 1991 to 2004 when he moved to Bhopal as MP CM.
IMAGE: Sushma Swaraj won Vidisha in the Lok Sabha elections of 2009 and 2014. Sushmaji didn't contest the 2019 election, citing ill health. Ramakant Bhargava easily retained the seat for the BJP, polling 853,022 votes.
The last time Mamaji won the Vidisha seat, in 2004, he polled 428,030 votes.
The Modi Effect is clearly visible in the votes the BJP won 2014 onwards in Vidisha.In 2009, Sushmaji polled 438,235 votes; five years later it rose to 714,348 votes. In 2019, the BJP polled 853,022 votes.
The majority in 2019: 503,084 votes; in 2014, it was 410,698 votes. In 2009, it was 389,844 votes.
IMAGE: The Modi effect was also interestingly highlighted in the voter turnout in Vidisha. From 556,128 in 2009 to 1,073,781 in 2014 to 1,251,013 in 2019.
IMAGE: If Shivraj Singh Chouhan wins the Vidisha election, as he is bound to, he may be rewarded with a Cabinet post in a likely Modi third term ministry to make up for the snub he received last December when a little known politician named Mohan Yadav replaced him.
G Kishan Reddy files his nomination papers for the Secunderabad Lok Sabha seat, which he won in 2019.
Bandaru Dattatreya, now the governor of Haryana, won Secunderabad for the first time for the BJP in 1989; he won it again in 1998 and 1999, and in 2014.
When Kishan Reddy won the seat in 2019, his votes polled (384,780) had declined from Dattatreya's in 2014 (438,271).
Reddy defeated his Telangana Rashtriya Samithi rival Talasani Sai Kiran Yadav by 62,114 votes.
In 2014, Dattatreya defeated the Congress's then two-term sitting MP M Anjan Kumar Yadav by 254,735 votes.
IMAGE: Danam Nagender, who left the Bharatiya Rashtriya Samithi in March, is the Congress candidate in Secunderabad this election. Nagender has been in several parties in recent years -- the Congress, the Telugu Desam, the BRS...
There is the BRS's T Padma Rao Goud -- former deputy speaker of the Telangana assembly -- in the fray as well.
IMAGE: Kishan Reddy heads the BJP in Telangana and the Mo-Shah leadership in Delhi will hope he will retain his seat even though it appears a tad difficult after the Congress triumph in the 2023 assembly elections in the state.
IMAGE: The BJP in Telangana is riven by rivalries, forcing the BJP to replace Bandi Sanjay with Kishan Reddy as the state party chief in July 2023.
Photographs curated by Manisha Kotian/Rediff.com
Feature Presentation: Ashish Narsale/Rediff.com
