New Delhi: Sitting MP and former Union minister Maneka Gandhi lost to Samajwadi Party’s Rambhual Nishad by 43,174 votes in Uttar Pradesh’s Sultanpur.
Nishad secured 4,44,330 votes, while Maneka got 4,01,156 votes. Udraj Verma of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) came a distant third with 1,63,025 votes.
Until now, the former Union minister was the longest serving MP currently, with her first win came way back in 1989 when she won from Pilibhit. She had been representing Sultanpur in Parliament since 2019.
ThePrint had earlier reported that unlike most BJP leaders, Maneka Gandhi’s Lok Sabha poll campaign did not feature religion or Hindutva or the Ram Mandir. She focused largely on the local issues and the work that has been done in Sultanpur specifically, since she took charge in 2019.
Maneka had won the 2019 Lok Sabha election from Sultanpur, a constituency she represented for the first time, by a sliver — just about 14,000 votes. This time, she wants her victory margin to be in lakhs.
Her son Varun Gandhi, an MP from Pilibhit, a constituency held by either Maneka or him since 1996, was dropped by the BJP and replaced with Uttar Pradesh minister Jitin Prasada.
She had served as minister in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) governments headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Narendra Modi.
(Edited by Tony Rai)