The 2014 Lok Sabha Elections were quite historic – in more
than one way. We saw the first non-Congress party to take majority on its own,
the Congress being reduced to its worse MP count despite coming out of 2 terms
in power, and even in terms of the large voter percentage, considerably higher
than ever before. However, it was also the first time people saw the emergence
of a new Political outfit that was born out of the Anti-Corruption movement. With
lots and lots of words, and very little ground results to show, it ended up
winning only 4 seats – all in the state of Punjab.
You must have seen the analysis going on all around the
media with the figures of vote-shares and victory-margins and all the fancy stuff.
But here are a few things that I could not find anywhere – neither on TV, nor
across the social media. So I’ve decided to write and illustrate about some
statistics that really surprised me when comparing the performances of the big
players.
SEATS CONTESTED v/s SEATS WON
First of all, the most shocking statistic I stumbled upon
while reading through the Election Results was the number of candidates fielded
by the major national parties [With more than 400 seats contested].
There by, the win-contested percentages of these 4 stack out
to be as follows:
- BJP - 66.04%
- INC - 9.52%
- AAP - 0.94%
- BSP - 0%
LOST DEPOSITS
I was just wondering how the party which talks the most
about utilizing funds effectively, ended up losing the maximum amount with
minimal results to show for it.
First of all, it really surprised me that they chose to
contest from 434 seats in their first Lok Sabha Elections (7 seats more than
BJP’s tally).
The security deposit amount in this year’s election was Rs.
25,000/- per candidate per seat, refundable only if the candidate secured a
sixth or more number of votes polled in the constituency.
Here’s how the stats shape out for parties having lost
deposits over 80 or more seats.
Though CPI(M) tops this one having lost their deposit on 80 out
of the 81 seats they contested, AAP Candidates lost their deposits in a
staggering 413 seats out of the 434 they contested.
If we go into the quantification of this stat, Deposit for
413 seats = 413 x 25,000 = Rs. 1,03,25,000/- which comes to over a Crore worth
of money lost in deposits by a single party!
VICTORY MARGINS
While the BJP dominated the majority of victory margins
across the country with 36 candidates featuring in the list of top 50 margins
of victory, they also had 2 out of 5 in the smallest margins list as well.
|
Constituency
|
Winning
Candidate
|
Trailing
Candidate
|
Margin(Votes)
|
|
Ladakh
(J&K)
|
T Chhewang (BJP)
|
Ghulam Raza (Ind.)
|
36
|
|
Mahasamund
(Chattisgarh)
|
CL Sahu (BJP)
|
Ajit Jogi (INC)
|
1217
|
|
Raichur
(Karnataka)
|
BV Nayak (INC)
|
AS Nayak (BJP)
|
1499
|
|
Lakshwadeep
|
Md. Faizal PP (NCP)
|
H Sayeed (INC)
|
1535
|
|
Hingoli
(Maharashtra)
|
RS Satav (INC)
|
WS Bapurao
|
1632
|
And just as I was about to post, I have come to stumble upon the news that AK has just conjured up a colossal drama once again in Delhi. With the Delhi Elections coming up, no wonder ...
Sources:
