The results of Lok Sabha elections 2024 threw in a big surprise for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) after the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) fell short of their 400+ ambition, settling for 293 seats. The opposition, united under the INDIA bloc, increased their strength in Parliament to 234.
TNM looks at a few candidates for whom the elections were expected to be cake walk, but tasted defeat.
Smriti Irani in Amethi
Kishori Lal Sharma – a Gandhi family loyalist and a Congress worker for the past four decades – was ridiculed by BJP workers, who called him a “peon” of the Gandhis’ and brushed him off as a weak candidate. In response, Sharma had said, “I can say with full confidence and conviction that I will defeat Smriti Irani.”
On the result day, he handed out a heavy defeat to the BJP leader and outgoing Union minister of Women and Child Development Smriti Irani and won by a margin of 1,67,196 votes. Smriti Irani, once an actor and then called a giant slayer for defeating Rahul Gandhi in the 2019 polls, said she couldn't care less about who the Congress candidate was, expressing confidence that they will be defeated before the elections.
“The [Congress] leadership is aware that this is a losing seat for them because if they were so confident of their victory, they would have announced their candidate by now.” she had told NDTV, only to be defeated by a margin of 1.67 lakh.
Prajwal Revanna in Hassan
Janata Dal (Secular) president HD Kumaraswamy accepted his “mistakes” in Hassan and said that he was not happy with the results after his nephew and rape-accused Prajwal Revanna lost to his Congress opponent Shreyas Patel by a margin of 42,649 votes.
The suspended MP, who won the seat in 2019, is accused of raping four women and videographing the sexual acts with more than 70 women. He is said to have made nearly 3,000 videos of such acts and some of the videos were circulated in Hassan district in the days leading up to the election. However, the issue came to public attention only after the voting on April 26.
Prajwal was arrested on May 31 when he returned to India after fleeing to Germany, and an inquiry is underway.
You can read our detailed coverage on Prajwal Revanna here
Ajay Kumar Mishra ‘Teni’ in Kheri
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had demanded in 2022 that the Narendra Modi-government sack Union Minister Ajay Kumar Mishra, whose son Ashish Mishra was named in the Lakhimpur Kheri chargesheet. He accused the BJP of trying to protect the accused, saying India was a witness to the act.
The BJP did not take any action and fielded him again in Kheri constituency, where he was defeated by a margin of 34,329 by Samajwadi Party’s Utkarsh Verma Madhur. Ajay Kumar Mishra was eyeing a hat-trick from the constituency after winning the seat in both the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
Omar Abdullah in Baramulla
Abdul ‘Engineer’ Rashid Sheikh, an independent candidate and two-time MLA from Jammu and Kashmir, was imprisoned in 2019 under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act or UAPA. Having lost the 2014 and 2019 elections, Rashid contested in Baramulla constituency from jail in 2024 and secured victory over National Conference leader Omar Abdullah by a margin of 2,04,142 votes. Rashid’s sons Abrar and Asrar started campaigning for him only a week ahead of the elections with the slogan, jail ke badla vote se (Avenge for jail with vote).
In 2005, BJP MLAs inside the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly assaulted him for hosting a beef party in a government guest house. The party was held as a mark of protest against cow-vigilantism and incidents of lynchings.
Extending his wishes to Rashid, Omar said, “I don’t believe his victory will help his release from prison or achieve representation for people in North Kashmir. But the voters have spoken and in a democracy that’s all that matters.”
Vinod Kumar Sonkar in Kaushambi
Mahua Moitra, who was expelled from Parliament in 2023, had said that the parliamentary ethics panel asked her the “most disgusting, invasive, private details” about her personal life, which had no relation to the hearing. It was led by Vinod Kumar Sonkar, who was fielded by the BJP again after success in 2014 and 2019.
“The chairman (Vinod Kumar) exhibited a preconceived bias by maliciously and clearly in a defamatory way questioning me, so much so that five of the 11 members present walked out and boycotted the proceedings in protest at his shameful conduct,” she wrote to the Lok Sabha speaker.
Samajwadi Party’s Pushpendra Saroj defeated Vinod Kumar by a margin of 1,03,944 votes to become one of the youngest MPs in the Parliament.