With the final results of the 18th Lok Sabha elections on Tuesday, June 4th, 2024, it arrived with many plot twists as the INDIA alliance attained an amazing score of 232 seats. Now, all eyes are on the BJP, which will require the cooperation of its partners to create a government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Among the notable outcomes, the candidates with highest margin of victory have drawn significant attention. If the BJP wins the government at the Centre, Modi would equal Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s record of holding the PM’s chair for the third consecutive time.

Lok Sabha elections
Image Source: MediCircle

As the results were released on Tuesday, there were many seats where the final difference between the top two candidates was fewer than 10,000. However, other leaders swept through their seats to claim overwhelming victories while also surpassing the record for the biggest margin of victory in a Lok Sabha election – 6.96 lakh votes, set by BJP’s Pritam Munde in a 2014 by-poll in Maharashtra’s Beed.

Congressman Rakibul Hassan is one of the top five candidates with the largest margin of victory, along with former MP Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, union Home Minister Amit Shah, Shankar Lalwani, and CR Patil, according to ETV Bharat's Saurabh Sharma.

In the Lok Sabha elections, Union Home Minister Amit Shah currently has the fifth-largest margin of victory after beating Congressman Sonal Ramabhai Patel, his closest opponent, by 7.44 lakh votes in Gandhinagar, Gujarat. Patel only garnered 2,66,256 votes, whereas Shah received 10,10,972 votes overall.

Gujarat also had the fourth-highest margin of victory in the Lok Sabha election of 2024. C R Patil of the BJP won the Navasari Lok Sabha seat with a resounding victory of 7.73 lakh votes over his opponent. Patil received 10,31,065 votes, compared to 2,57,514 for Nishadbhai Bhupatbhai Desai of the Congress, who was his closest opponent. After winning by 6.89 lakh votes in 2019, Patil, a three-term member of parliament from Navsari, held the record for the second-highest margin. Now, he's surpassed his record.

In the Vidisha Lok Sabha seat, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the former chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, triumphed with a massive majority of 8.21 lakh votes. The former chief minister received 11,16,460 votes overall, while Pratap Bhanu Sharma, his nearest Congress opponent, received 2,95,052 votes. One of the most senior BJP politicians, Chauhan served as Madhya Pradesh's chief minister from 2005 to 2023. His departure from office was perceived as an attempt by the Delhi leadership to undermine the stalwarts of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee period.

Cherished as "mama" (uncle), Chouhan ran for his sixth term in the Lok Sabha from Vidisha, a constituency held by BJP luminaries like as the late Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1991) and Sushma Swaraj (2009 and 2014).

The Congress leader from Assam’s Dhubri, Rakibul Hussain, now holds the second-largest margin of victory in Lok Sabha election history, with a margin of 10.12 lakh votes in the Dhubri constituency. Hussain got 14,71,885 votes, defeating incumbent AIUDF Md. Badruddin of All-India United Democratic Front, who bagged 4,59,409 votes.

With 12,26,751 votes to Sanjay Solanki of the Bahujan Samaj Party, his closest rival, who received 51,659 votes, BJP's sitting MP from Indore set a new record for the largest margin of victory in Lok Sabha elections. This makes the total margin of victory 11.72 lakhs. Remarkably, NOTA secured the second position on this seat with a total of more than 2 lakh votes.

On the final day of the election, Congress candidate Akshay Bam withdrew his nomination and joined the BJP, giving the Indore Lok Sabha constituency the largest margin of victory.

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