Lok Sabha Election Results: In Star Wars, some shine, some fade away

AGRA: While BJP’s candidates from Rampur Jaya Prada and Azamgarh’s Dinesh Lal Yadav alias Nirahua missed the bus, other other ‘glamorous’ candidates of the party including Mathura’s Hema Malini, Gurdaspur’s Sunny Deol, Gorakhpur’s Ravi Kishan have sailed smooth on Modi’s wave.


However Congress’s glamour quotient hasn’t worked as its actor-turned-politicians including Fatehpur Sikri’s Raj Babbar, Mumbai North’s Urmila Matondkar and Patna Sahib’s

Shatrughan Sinha

lost the polls.

While, Raj Babbar was trailing by over 4.5 lakh votes against his BJP rival, Urmila and Sinha were also trailing by over 4.64 lakh and 2.83 lakh votes respectively.

Sunny Deol, who contested for the first time on BJP ticket from Gurdaspur defeated PPCC president, Sunil Jakhar with a margin of over 82K votes.

Jhakar had won this seat in a by-election from Gurdaspur. The seat had fallen vacant after the death of Bollywood star, Vinod Khanna, who had held it for the longest time. The late actor held the seat for BJP for four consecutive terms from 1998 to 2014.

Sunny’s father, veteran actor Dharmendra, who won the Bikaner seat in 2004, did not seek second term in politics, but campaigned for both his wife Hema and son Sunny.

Hema Malini contested the Lok Sabha elections for the first time in 2014, defeating RLD’s Jayant Chaudhary by over 3 lakh votes. The party opted for her again, despite anti incumbency factor against her. She was ahead of her closest rival Rashtriya Lok Dal’s Kunwar Narendra Singh.

Bhojpuri star Ravi Kishan, who switched his loyalties from Congress to BJP in this election season, also won from Yogi Adityanath's bastion, Gorakhpur with 7.14 lakh votes.

Sunny Deol's "Dillagi" co-star Urmila Matondkar, also fighting the elections for the first time on a Congress ticket from Mumbai North, failed to register a win, earning only 2.35 lakh votes against winning BJP candidate Gopal Shetty, whose vote count stood at 6.88 lakh votes.

The Modi factor, however, failed to yield dividends for actor-turned politician Jaya Prada, who recently switched to BJP after spending years in the Samajwadi Party. Her former colleague and now bitter rival, SP’s Azam Khan, was poised for a win in Uttar Pradesh's Rampur constituency.

Similarly, Nirahua was trailing by over 2.56 lakh votes against Samajwadi party’s chief Akhilesh Yadav, who led with 6.11 lakh votes in Azamgarh.