New Delhi: In the campaigning for the Lok Sabha elections, a clutch of constituencies grabbed a disproportionately high share of eyeballs and newspaper space. These were the seats from where powerful candidates had entered the fray, and witnessed high-voltage campaigns.
Here are the top 10 high-profile contests:
- Varanasi: Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal had vowed to defeat Narendra Modi. But, as the result proved, it was literally a cakewalk for the BJP's prime ministerial candidate, who defeated the former Delhi chief minister by 3.37 lakh votes. Congress candidate Ajay Rai was relegated to the third spot. Party vice-president Rahul Gandhi's impressive last-day roadshow failed to prevent his humiliation.
- Vadodra: The second parliamentary seat from where Mr Modi was contesting gave a massive thumbs-up to him. He trounced Congress general secretary Madhusudan Mistry by a record margin of 5.70 lakh votes. And he accomplished this feat without campaigning in the constituency.
- Gandhinagar: In the end, former deputy prime minister LK Advani's apprehensions about contesting the general election from the Gujarat capital was proved wrong. He vanquished Congress' Kiritbhai Ishwarbhai Patel by 4.83 lakh votes.
- Amritsar: The holy city was witness to a fierce contest between former Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh and Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley. Mr Singh described the BJP leader as an "outsider." The Congress stalwart eventually won by a margin of 1.02 lakh votes.
- Amethi: BJP vice president Smriti Irani gave Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi the jitters, but finally lost by 1.08 lakh votes. In 2009, he had won by a huge margin of 3.70 lakh votes. AAP leader Kumar Vishwas, who had been camping in the constituency since January 10 and had launched a high-decibel campaign, was pushed to the fourth spot. He could manage to garner a little over 25,000 votes.
- Azamgarh: Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav defeated BJP heavyweight Ramakant Yadav, who had won the seat in 2009, by some 63,000 votes. Azamgarh was the second constituency from where the SP supremo was contesting. He also retained Mainpuri.
- Chandigarh: Actor-turned-politician Kirron Kher ended the winning run of former union minister Pawan Kumar Bansal by wresting the seat by 69,642 votes. The Congress leader had been winning the seat since 1999. Activist-politician Gul Panag, who had entered the race as an AAP candidate, finished third. She secured 1.08 lakh votes.
- Pataliputra: Rashtriya Janata Dal founder and former Bihar chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav had staked his prestige from this constituency by fielding his daughter Misa Bharti. But it was the BJP candidate Ram Kripal Yadav, who quit the RJD just before the elections in protest against the denial of party ticket to him, who had the last laugh. He bagged the seat by 43,043 votes.
- Bangalore South: The contest between senior BJP leader Ananth Kumar and former Infosys czar Nandan Nilekani failed to live up to its billing as a high-profile contest. The BJP leader retained the seat for the seventh time by 2.29 lakh votes.
- Thiruvananthapuram: Former union minister Shashi Tharoor was engaged in a neck-to-neck race with the BJP's O Rajagopal. The Congress leader finally scraped through by a margin of 15,470 votes.
