Rahul Gandhi, the Congress leader, now has the largest winning margin in Uttar Pradesh and is expected to win big in Rae Bareli.
According to Election Commission figures released at 3:15 pm, Mr. Gandhi has more than 3 lakh votes more than his closest opponent, BJP candidate Dinesh Pratap Singh. In contrast, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is ahead of Congressman Ajay Rai in Varanasi by more than 1.4 lakh votes.
In 2019, Sonia Gandhi, who has been the Rae Bareli seat holder since 2004, defeated Mr. Singh with a margin of 1.67 lakh votes. She chose not to run for Lok Sabha in 2024 and instead transferred to the Rajya Sabha. Rahul Gandhi then took her place as the Congress candidate from Rae Bareli.
Mr Gandhi had represented the Amethi Lok Sabha seat from 2004 to 2019. In the last elections, he lost Amethi to BJP’s Smriti Irani, but won a second seat in Kerala and retained his MP status.
This time too he is contesting two seats – Rae Bareli (Uttar Pradesh) and Wayanad (Kerala) – and leading in both. In Wayanad, he is ahead of his nearest rival, Annie Raja of the CPM, by over 3 lakh votes.
The grand old party is also looking forward to wresting back its Amethi seat from the BJP with Smriti Irani trailing Congress candidate Kishori Lal by over 90,000 votes.
The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is ahead in 291 seats as against the opposition INDIA bloc’s 233 seats, shows the latest trends. The counting has also thrown surprises in Uttar Pradesh, where the Congress-Samajwadi Party alliance is ahead of the BJP.
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