New Delhi: Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, industrialist Naveen Jindal and UP Minister Jitin Prasada are among the turncoats who won the Lok Sabha polls while Ashok Tanwar, Sita Soren and Preneet Kaur joined the list of those who had defected to the saffron party but could not succeed.
Aviation Minister Scindia won from Guna constituency in Madhya Pradesh by a margin of over five lakh votes.
In 2019, Scindia had contested the polls from Guna on a Congress ticket but lost to BJP’s Krishna Pal Singh. The constituency has been a stronghold of the Scindia family, represented by his grandmother Vijaya Raje Scindia, popularly known as the Rajmata of Gwalior, for four consecutive terms from 1989 to 1998 as a BJP member.
In 2020, he revolted against the Congress and joined the BJP along with his 22 loyalist MLAs in Madhya Pradesh, which resulted in the BJP assuming control of the state government.
Industrialist and two-time MP Naveen Jindal had joined the BJP in March this year, ending his two-decade-long association with the Congress. He won from Kurukshetra in Haryana by a margin of over 29,000 votes.
Jitin Prasada, Uttar Pradesh PWD minister and son of veteran Congress leader late Jitendra Prasada, had quit the Congress three years ago and joined the BJP. He was fielded from Pilibhit Lok Sabha constituency in place of sitting MP Varun Gandhi and won by a margin of over 1.64 lakh votes.
Former Haryana Congress president Ashok Tanwar, who had joined the BJP earlier this year, lost the election to Congress’ Kumari Selja from Sirsa by a margin of over 2.68 lakh votes.
Tanwar had quit the Congress in 2019 and joined the AAP in 2022. In between, the former Lok Sabha MP had floated his party and even joined the Trinamool Congress (TMC) for a brief period.
Sita Soren, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) MLA who had joined BJP in March this year, lost the election from Dumka by a margin of over 22,000 votes. She is the sister-in-law of former Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren.
Former Union minister Preneet Kaur, who had joined the BJP this year, lost the elections from Patiala, a constituency from where she had won four times earlier. She is the wife of Congress heavyweight Captain Amarinder Singh.
Kaur finished at the third spot and lost by a margin of around 16,000 votes.
Ravneet Bittu, who won as a Congress candidate in 2019 and switched to the BJP in March, could not retain his Ludhiana seat. He lost to Congress’ Amrinder Singh Raja by over 20,000 votes.
Sushil Rinku, who was Aam Aadmi Party’s lone MP in the outgoing Lok Sabha, also joined the BJP ahead of the elections but could not retain his Jalandhar seat. He lost to Congess’ Charanjit Singh Channi, the former Punjab chief minister.
Starting as the Congress MLA from Jalandhar West in 2017, Rinku switched to the AAP in April 2023 ahead of the Jalandhar Lok Sabha by-poll, necessitated by the death of Congress MP Santokh Singh Chaudhary. He won the seat to become the lone MP of the party in the lower house. After the AAP named him as its candidate from Jalandhar, he switched to the BJP March 27.
Rana Gurmit Sodhi, a senior Congress leader and a close aide of former chief minister Amarinder Singh, lost the election from the Ferozepur Lok Sabha constituency. Sodhi, a former Punjab cabinet minister, had joined the BJP in December 2021, weeks before the state assembly polls.
Similarly, three-time MLA Manjit Singh Manna Mianwind, who joined the BJP from the SAD in January 2022, was fielded from Khadoor Sahib and lost the elections.
Among the defectors fielded by the AAP in Punjab were sitting legislator Raj Kumar Chabbewal and ex-MLAs Gurpreet Singh GP and Pawan Tinu. Chabbewal and GP, who switched loyalties from the Congress in March this year, contested from Hoshiarpur and Fatehgarh Sahib respectively, while Tinu, who jumped ship from the SAD in April tried his luck from Jalandhar.
While Chabbewal won the elections by a margin of over 44,000 votes, Tinu and GP lost.
PTI