7 MPs, All from BJP, Elected to Lok Sabha with over 70% Vote Share, Congress Won 3 Seats with under 30%: Study

Only seven MPs in the recently formed 18th Lok Sabha won the elections with more than 70% of the total votes polled in their respective constituencies and all of them were from the Bharatiya Janata Party, a new report from the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and National Election Watch (NEW) shows. On the other end of the list were three MPs from the Congress who were elected with less than 30% of the total votes polled in their seats.

ADR and NEW have analysed the vote shares for 542 out of the 543 constituencies in the Lok Sabha elections, barring Surat where the BJP MP got elected unopposed.

As per the report, more than half of these 542 MPs – 279 – won with vote shares of over 50% while 263 (49%) won with less than 50% of the total votes polled in their constituencies.

“Out of 239 winners of BJP, 75 (31%) won with less than 50% of total votes polled in their constituencies. 57 (58%) out of 99 winners from INC, 32 (86%) out of 37 winners from SP, 21 (72%) out of 29 winners from AITC and 14 (64%) out of 22 winners from DMK have won with less than 50% of total votes polled in their constituency,” it added.

On the other hand, 164 MPs from the BJP and 42 from the Congress won with more than 50% of the vote share. Telugu Desam Party was in the third position with 15 MPs with more than 50% vote share.

The top seven lawmakers from the BJP who won with the highest vote shares included Indore MP Shankar Lalwani who got 78.54% of the total votes polled, followed by Navsari MP CR Patil who secured an over 77% vote share. The list of seven for the BJP included four seats in Gujarat, two in Madhya Pradesh, and one in Tripura.

The percentage of vote share was calculated by dividing the votes polled for the winner by the total number of valid votes polled. So a 77% vote share means that on average out of every 100 valid votes polled, 77 were for Patil.

Vidisha MP Shivraj Singh Chouhan got about 77% of the total votes while Gandhinagar MP Amit Shah got 76.5%. The list also included Tripura West MP Biplab Kumar Deb (72.85%), Vadodara MP Dr Hemang Joshi (72.04%), and Panchmahal MP Rajpalsinh Mahendrasinh Jadav (70.22%).

In total, five MPs made it to the House with less than 30% of the total votes from their seats. The bottom three positions in the list were bagged by Congress lawmakers from Punjab – Firozpur’s Sher Singh Ghubaya (23.70%), Patiala’s Dr Dharamvira Gandhi (26.54%), and Amritsar’s Gurjeet Singh Aujla (28.18%).

The other two MPs on the list were also from Punjab – Anandpur Sahib’s Malvinder Singh Kang from the Aam Aadmi Party and independent Faridkot lawmaker Sarabjeet Singh Khalsa. They won with about 29% of the total votes.

The Lok Sabha elections were conducted between April 19 and June 1 in seven phases while the results were declared on June 4.