India rejects dynastic politics, but only mostly from Opposition

Was the massive mandate in favour of Narendra Modi a rejection of India's ruling elites as well? The results of the Lok Sabha elections have all but left most political dynasties battered and mauled.

From Rahul Gandhi in Amethi to Jyotiraditya Scindia in Guna, voters in the recently concluded general elections seem to have decimated the handful of families that called the shots in India's politics. Well, almost.

A closer look reveals that dynasts in the BJP are comparatively safer, while those in the Opposition had it worse. Interestingly, dynastic politics has always been an issue for the BJP, with Modi attacking Congress repeatedly during his campaign.

India Today's Data Intelligence Unit (DIU) zeroed in on 51 leaders coming from politically powerful families and found that most dynasts who lost the elections this time belonged to the Opposition.

According to Gilles Vernier, co-director of the Trivedi Centre for Political Data at Ashoka University, and Christophe Jaffrelot, professor of Indian Politics & Sociology at King's India Institute, London, the number of dynasts in the Lok Sabha is more than 30 per cent. We have, however, selected only those candidates who are related to chief ministers or Union ministers, both present and former.

Of the 51 dynasts identified, 23 won the elections this time - most from BJP. The average votes by which the dynasts won was huge - 2,02,373. The average margin by which dynasts lost was 1,40,686.

Most BJP dynasts won

The BJP had eight dynasts who won the election this time. It is followed by the Congress with five; two each from Shiromani Akali Dal and Punjab and Samajwadi Party; and one each from Trinamool Congress, DMK, National Conference, JD(S), NCP and LJP.

The BJP dynasts won by healthy margins. Of the eight candidates, seven won by more than one lakh votes.

The highest margin was by former Rajasthan CM Vasundhara Raje's son Dushyant Singh, who got 4,53,928 votes more than his nearest rival in Jhalawar Baran constituency.

Dushyant is followed by Rahul Gandhi, who recorded a victory margin of 4,31,770 votes in Kerala's Wayanad. His mother Sonia Gandhi won Raebareli by a margin of 1,67,178 votes.

Former Himachal Pradesh CM Prem Kumar Dhumal's son Anurag Singh Thakur from BJP won Hamirpur by the third highest margin of 3,99,572 votes.

Maneka Gandhi, the daughter-in-law of Indira Gandhi, won Sultanpur in UP by the least margin among dynasts. She managed to scrape past BSP's Chandra Bhadra Singh by only 14,526 votes. She is also the only BJP dynast candidate to win with a margin of less than one lakh votes. Her son Varun won Pilibhit in UP by 2,55,627 votes.

Former Karnataka CM BS Yeddyurappa's son BY Raghavendra from BJP won Shimoga by 2,23,360 votes.

In Maharashtra, late telecom minister Pramod Mahajan's daughter Poonam and niece Pritam Gopinathrao Munde won Mumbai North Central and Beed seats respectively on BJP tickets.

Former Punjab CM and Shiromani Akali Dal leader Parkash Singh Badal's son Sukhbir won Firozpur by 1,99,850 votes. His wife Harsimrat Kaur Badal, contesting from Bathinda, defeated Congress' Amarinder Singh Raja Warring by 21,772 votes.

Other dynasts who won

Madhya Pradesh CM Kamal Nath's son Nakul won Chhindwara by a margin of 37,536 votes. Former J&K CM and National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah retained Srinagar with a margin of 70,500 votes.

Former UP CM and Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav won with a margin of 94,389 votes. His son Akhilesh won Azamgarh in UP by 2,59,874 votes. Prajwal Revanna, grandson of former PM HD Deve Gowda won Hassan in Karnataka by 1,41,324 votes.

Other dynasts to win are Sharad Pawar's daughter Supriya Sule from Baramati in Maharashtra, Karunanidhi's daughter Kanimozhi from Thoothukudi in Tamil Nadu, Amarinder Singh's wife Preneet Kaur from Patiala, Tarun Gogoi's son Gaurav from Kaliabor in Assam, Mamata Banerjee's nephew Abhishek from Diamond Harbour in West Bengal and Ram Vilas Paswan's son Chirag from Jamui.

Big losers from Opposition

Of the 51 dynast candidates, 28 could not win. While Congress led the pack of losing dynasts at 13, two each from the RLD, JD(S), Jannayak Janta Party and JMM, and one each from the BJP, Samajwadi Party, Nagaland People's Front, TRS, INLD, Pragatishil Samajwadi Party (Lohia) and NCP failed to make the cut as well.

The only BJP dynast who lost was Daggubati Purandeswari from Visakhapatnam by a small margin of 4,414 votes.

Congress's Unlucky 13

Perhaps the biggest upset of this election was Amethi, a seat held by the Gandhi family for decades. Rahul Gandhi, who won Wayanad, was defeated here by BJP's Smriti Irani by more than 55,000 votes.

Former civil aviation minister Madhavrao Scindia's son Jyotiraditya lost from Guna in Madhya Pradesh by 1,25,549 votes. In Mumbai South, former minister Murli Deora's son Milind lost to Shiv Sena's Arvind Sawant once again.

Former minister and actor-turned-politician Sunil Dutt's daughter Priya contested from Mumbai North Central and lost to another dynast, Poonam Mahajan, by 1,30,005 votes.

Former BJP minister Jaswant Singh's son Manvendra contested from Barmer in Rajasthan on a Congress ticket and lost. Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlot's son Vaibhav lost from Jodhpur by 2,74,440 votes.

Former Haryana CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda and his son Deepender contested from Sonepat and Rohtak respectively. Both lost to the BJP. While Hooda Senior lost by 1,64,864 votes, Deepender missed out by 7,503 votes.

Former Maharashtra CM Shankarrao Chavan's son Ashokrao Shankarrao Chavan lost Nanded to BJP's Prataprao Patil Chikhalikar by 40,148 votes. Former minister Santosh Mohan Dev's daughter Sushmita lost from Silchar in Assam.

Former Haryana CM Bhajan Lal Bishnoi's grandson Bhavya was Congress' youngest candidate. He contested from Hisar, but could secure only 1,84,369 votes, placing him at the third position.

Former Himachal Pradesh CM Sukh Ram's grandson Aashray Sharma contested from Mandi seat on a Congress ticket and lost. Kirti Azad, another dynast from Bihar, lost from Dhanbad.

Other losing dynasts

Former Jharkhand CM Shibu Soren and his daughter Anjali fought from Dumka (Jharkhand) and Mayurbhanj (Odisha) respectively, and both lost. While Soren senior lost by 47,590 votes, his daughter with 1,35,265 votes stood at the third position.

Former PM HD Deve Gowda, who contested from Tumkur in Karnataka, lost by 13,339 votes. Karnataka CM HD Kumaraswamy's son Nikhil lost from Mandya in Karnataka by 1,25,876 votes.

Akhilesh Yadav's wife Dimple lost from Kannauj by 12,353 votes. Mulayam Singh Yadav's younger brother Shivpal Singh Yadav, who broke away from the Samajwadi Party last year and formed his own party, Pragatishil Samajwadi Party (Lohia), contested from Firozabad. But he came third, securing only 91,651 votes.

Telangana CM K Chandrasekhar Rao's daughter K Kavitha contested from Nizamabad and lost by 70,875 votes. RJD patriarch Lalu Prasad Yadav's daughter Misha Bharti lost from Pataliputra by 39,321 votes.

Dushyant Chautala and Digvijay Chautala, grandsons of former Haryana CM Om Prakash Chautala and great-grandsons of former deputy PM Chaudhary Devi Lal, fought on two seats Sonepat and Hisar respectively from Jannayak Janta Party, which Dushyant founded. Both of them lost these seats.

Fate of the turncoats

There were candidates who switched camps before the elections. Some benefited from it and some did not.

NT Rama Rao's daughter Daggubati Purandeswari, who was a Congress MP in the UPA-2 government, had resigned from the party in 2014 and joined the BJP. After joining BJP, she contested twice from Andhra Pradesh - Rajampet in 2014 and Visakhapatnam in 2019 - and lost both times.

Purandeswari might not have been lucky after switching to the BJP, but former UP CM Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna's daughter Rita Bahuguna Joshi was. Rita, who joined the BJP in 2016, contested from Allahabad and won by 1,84,275 votes.

On the contrary, for BJP dynasts who defected to the Congress, things didn't go right.

Manvendra Singh quit the BJP and joined Congress right before the Rajasthan assembly elections in 2018. This decision didn't favour him. He contested the state elections and lost to former CM Vasundhara Raje in Jhalarapatan. He then contested from Barmer Lok Sabha seat on a Congress ticket and lost to the BJP's Kailash Chaudhary by 3,23,808 votes, thus continuing his losing streak.

Former Bihar CM Bhagwant Jha Azad's son Kirti Azad was a BJP MP from Darbhanga. In 2015, he was suspended for openly targeting Arun Jaitley, alleging irregularities and corruption in the Delhi Cricket Association. Azad joined Congress in February this year and contested from Dhanbad in Jharkhand. He lost to the BJP's Pashupati Nath Singh by more than 4.8 lakh votes.