BJP candidates capture Gujarat with dreamlike margins, highest at 6.78 lakh

Ahmedabad:  The Bharatiya Janata Party in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Gujarat once again captured all 26 Lok Sabha seats on Thursday while decimating the opposition Congress with BJP candidates improving their voteshare with dreamlike numbers, the highest margin being 6.78 lakh votes and the lowest at 1.25 lakh.

If the Modi wave swept all the seats with a vote share of 31 per cent in 2014, the 2019 tsunami was set to send it skyrocketing with all BJP candidates, except one, improving their winning margins drastically.

Seeking re-election from Navsari constituency in South Gujarat, BJP’s C.R. Patil defeated his nearest rival by a whopping 6,78,545 votes, while party chief Amit Shah registered an emphatic victory margin of 5,55,843 votes, surpassing party patriarch L.K. Advani’s winning lead of 4.83 lakh.

There is more.

Surat BJP candidate Darshana Jardosh won with a margin of 5,47,155 votes, improving her margin of 5,33,190 in 2014. Another woman candidate, Ranjan Bhatt won by 5,63,951 votes almost matching Modi’s 5,70,128 in 2014. Modi subsequently preferred to retain the Varanasi seat in UP.

As many as 10 others posted victory margins of more than three lakh votes over their Congress rivals.

Only four candidates’ victory margins only marginally fell – in Porbandar, Mehsana and Ahmedabad West. The only seat where the margin fell from 2.30 lakh votes in 2014 to 1,25,559 was Dahod in central Gujarat, which was contested for the second time by Jashwant Bhabhor. This seat is reserved for Scheduled Tribes.

Published on: May 23, 2019 at 20:45 IST

IANS