7 Lok Sabha election losses that shocked the nation
Winning a Lok Sabha election is a matter of prestige for leading politicians from the main political parties in India. But there have been many instances when some of the most prominent faces of Indian politics lost Lok Sabha elections from their constituencies. BR Ambedkar, Indira Gandhi, and Manmohan Singh are a few of them.
The first phase 2024 Lok Sabha Elections started today, Friday, April 19, 2024. Some of the big names of politics in India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, and Congress' ex-president Rahul Gandhi are in the fray. While Indian voters have sent some of the prominent politicians to the Lok Sabha, they have also made political stalwarts taste defeats in the Parliamentary elections.
Here is a list of prominent political faces in India who lost Lok Sabha elections.
BR Ambedkar
BR Ambedkar
Independent India's first most shocking defeat was the loss of BR Ambedkar in the 1952 Lok Sabha Elections, when he lost to the Congress' Narayan Sadoba Kajrolkar from the Mumbai North Central constituency. Ambedkar also lost a by election from Bhandara in 1954.
Atal Bihari Vajpayee
Atal Bihari Vajpayee
After becoming a Member of Parliament (MP) from Balrampur in 1957 for the first time, the ex-India PM lost election to the Congress' Subhadra Joshi in 1962. Vajpayee lost his life's second election to Congress candidate Madhavrao Scindia in the 1984 polls from Gwalior. It happened in the first election after the then India PM Indira Gandhi was assasinated.
Indira Gandhi
Indira Gandhi
It was hard to believe that Indira Gandhi would lost a Lok Sabha election from her stronghold of Raebareli. But her decision to impose the national emergency in 1975 cost her dearly. In the 1977 Lok Sabha elections, she lost to socialist leader Raj Narayan, who got the moniker of a giant killer after his victory.
Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna
Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna
A Congress chief minister from Uttar Pradesh and a finance minister in the Charan Singh government is known for losting election from Allahabad to none other than Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan. The star of the millennium defeated Bahuguna in 1984 in the only Lok Sabha election he contested.
Manmohan Singh
Manmohan Singh
He remained India's PM for 10 years- from 2004 to 2014- but his attempt to win a Lok Sabha election in 1999 bore no fruit when he lost the South Delhi seat to Vijay Kumar Malhotra. While the BJP candidate got 261,230 votes, Singh received 231,231 votes in the poll.
Rahul Gandhi
Rahul Gandhi
Amethi had been the Gandhi family's stronghold for decades. There was a time when no one stood a chance to give fight to a Congress candidate, let alone winning from the seat. But the BJP won the Congress bastion when Smriti Irani defeated Rahul Gandhi by more than 50,000 votes from the constituency.
HD Deve Gowda
HD Deve Gowda
India's former PM HD Deve Gowda suffered a shocking loss from Tumkur, Karnataka, in the 2019 elections, losing to the BJP's GS Basavaraj.