BJP chief Amit Shah made history by winning the Gandhinagar seat in Gujarat by a record margin of over 5.57 lakh votes. Shah has pulled 8.94 lakh votes while Congress's CJ Chavda polled in just 3.37 lakh votes. The moment Shah's candidature became clear, the question for the party workers was never about BJP's victory but about ensuring a victory margin greater than previous years.
Shah contested his first Lok Sabha elections and won with a thumping majority. Shah won the seat with a victory margin that was higher by over 82,000 votes than what LK Advani had won in 2014. Shah directed his polling agent Harshad Patel to organise a huge victory procession to celebrate the results.
It should be noted that Gandhinagar has been a BJP bastion since the 1990s and veteran BJP Leader LK Advani had won the seat six times. In the 2014 elections he won it with a margin of 4.83 lakh votes. In fact, when Advani was representing the seat, Shah had acted as the in-charge of Advani for the seat. The seat was also once represented by former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
The constituency is also the one with the second highest number of voters among all the 26 constituencies in Gujarat. It has 19.21 lakh registered voters and is made up of seven assembly segments -- Gandhinagar North, Kalol, Sanand, Ghatlodiya, Vejalpur, Naranpura and Sabarmati.
Of these segments, the 54-year-old Shah had been representing Naranpura as an MLA since 2012. Before that he represented Sarkhej assembly seat which he had won for three successive elections. Shah had later resigned as an MLA after being elected to the Rajya Sabha in 2017.
