Ahmedabad: BJP national president Amit Shah broke the victory margin record of his own party veteran LK Advani from Gandhinagar Lok Sabha seat in 2019 Lok Sabha polls as he defeated rival Congress Candidate CJ Chavda by a margin of 5,57,014 votes. In 2014 General election, LK Advani had won this seat with a margin of 4. 83, 121 votes.
In 2019 Polls, Amit Shah won with highest ever margin of votes so far as the electoral history of Gandhinagar seat is concerned. But there are two BJP candidates from Gujarat who have won Lok Sabha seats with a bigger margin of votes than Amit Shah.
In the first case, BJP’s Navsari candidate C R Patil defeated rival Congress candidate Dharmesh Patel with a margin of 6,89,668 votes.
In the second case, Vadodara BJP candidate Ranjana Bhatt defeated rival Congress candidate Prashant Patel with a margin of 5,87,825 votes. Interesting, Narendra Modi had contested from Vadodara seat in 2014 Lok Sabha seat and won with a margin of 5,70,128 votes.
However, Modi, gave up this seat as he had retained Varanasi seat in Uttar Pradesh. Ranjana Bhatt had contested Vadodara Lok Sabha in by-poll and had won it.
This time, Vadodara BJP candidate Ranjana Bhatt won with a bigger margin of votes than the Modi’s victory margin of 2014 poll from this seat.
Gandhinagar Lok Sabha seat is considered a BJP bastion since 1989 polls. BJP patriarch LK Advani contested from Gandhinagar seat for six times and won.
In 2009 Lok Sabha polls, LK Advani had won this with a margin of 1,21, 747 votes (15.4 %). In the 2004 general election, L K Advani had won this seat with a margin of 2,17,138 votes (25.7 %). The voter turn was 39.7 percent.
According to poll data, in 1999 Lok Sabha Polls, LK Advani had won from Gandhinagar seat with a margin of 1,88,944 votes (25.5 %).
In 1998 General election, BJP veteran LK Advani won from Gandhinagar with a margin of 2,76,701 (29.8 %) votes.
Interestingly, Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had contested from Gandhinagar seat in 1996 general election and won this seat with a margin of 1,88,872 (37.9 %) votes. The former deputy prime minister first contested from this seat in 1991 general election and had won with a margin of 1,25,679 (20.1 %) votes.
It was a maiden Lok Sabha fight for BJP Party chief, barely 21 months after he entered the Rajya Sabha in July 2017.
“We had set the target that our BJP national President Amit Shah should win with a margin of 7 lakh votes. However, we fell short of this margin as voter turn was three percent lower than our expectation,’’ said a BJP leader.
In October 2014, BJP's Pritam Munde, who contested from the Beed Lok Sabha seat in Maharashtra had won by nearly 7 lakh votes - the highest ever in India's electoral history.
The seat fell vacant after Pritam's father and Union minister Gopinath Munde died in a car accident. Pritam Munde had bagged a total of 9,16,923 votes while her nearest rival, Ashokrao Shankarrao Patil of the Congress, secured 2,24,678 votes.
Munde's margin of 6,92,245 was a way above the 5.7 lakh vote margin secured by Prime Minister Narendra Modi from the Vadodara Lok Sabha seat in May 2014. Modi later gave up the seat.
However, the highest victory margin ever till October 18, 2014, was Left leader Anil Basu's margin of 5,92,502 votes from Arambagh.
BJP has won all 26 Lok Sabha seats from Gujarat and initial data suggest that all these candidates have won with higher vote margin than previous general elections of 2014.