When all the parties are trying hard to woo the voters, a minor swing of less than three per cent votes could change the fortune of 19 seats in Uttar Pradesh.Uttar Pradesh is home to 20 crore people and has 80 lok Sabha seats.
Interestingly, Varanasi, from where BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi is contesting, the party’s veteran, Murli Manohar Joshi, won the seat by just 2.59 per cent of total votes polled in 2009. Still BJP found the Holy city as the safest seat for Modi in UP. The lowest victory margin in the entire country was in Tonk Sawai Madhopur where the gap was of just 0.39 per cent.
Five seats in UP were decided by a margin of less than 10,000 votes in 2009. The lowest victory margin was in Chandauli where the difference was of just 459 votes between the SP and the BSP candidate. Aonla seat was won by BJP’s Menaka Gandhi by just 7,681 votes. She managed to win by a margin of 1.09 per cent of votes. She contested against Dharmendra Kumar of Samajwadi Party, who has now joined the BJP and is contesting from Aonla while Menka is now contesting from Pilibhit.
Zafar Ali Naqvi won Kheri seat just by 8,777 votes. His winning margin was just 1.24 per cent. He defeated BSP’s Ilyas Azmi. This time Naqvi might find the sailing tough as people are annoyed by his behavior and say that he had not even visited the area after his victory in last lok Sabha elections.
Congress won Bareilly seat by a margin of 9,338 votes. Its candidate, Praveen Kumar Aron, registered the win by a margin of 1.32 per cent votes. He defeated BJP’s Santosh Gangwar. Victories in two other Parliamentary constituencies - Fatehpur Sikri and Jalau - were decided by a margin of 1.43 per cent votes.
In Agra, BJP’s Dr Ram Shankar won by 9,751 votes. His victory margin was just 1.50 per cent. On Sambhal and Bhadohi seats the winner was decided by a margin of 1.97 per cent. On Gautam Budh Nagar Parliamentary seat the margin was 2.15 per cent while in Aligarh, the gap between the first and the second candidate was just 2.39 per cent.
The other constituencies which had less than 3 per cent of votes as winning margin are Phoolpur (2.64 per cent) , Salempur (2.68 per cent), Mirjapur (2.69 per cent), muzaffarnagar (2.76 per cent), Sitapur (2.79 per cent), Ambedkarnagar (2.80 per cent), and Kushinagar (2.89 per cent).