Lok Sabha Election Results 2019: BJP and Trinamool Congress Push Movie Stars to Power

As the Bharatiya Janata Party fought anti-incumbency and returned to power with full majority, Bollywood stars contesting from the saffron party's ticket also made major political gains during Lok Sabha Elections 2019. While old candidates like Manoj Tiwari and Kirron Kher returned to power by routing their opponents, new entrant Sunny Deol won from Gurdaspur, Punjab, drubbing Sunil Jakhar of the Congress.

Deol, who was presented with a hand pump in Gurdaspur while he filed his nomination (a call back to his hit drama Gadar), defeated Jakhar by a decent margin. Jakhar, a known politician, was elected to the Lok Sabha in a by-election held in October 2017.

BJP candidate Hema Malini scored a massive lead in Mathura, with 6,64,291 votes at the time of filing this report, against her opponents - Congress' Mahesh Pathak and Kunwar Narendra Singh of the Rashtriya Lok Dal.

After a neck and neck battle, actress-politician Kirron Kher, BJP's candidate elect from 2014, led Congress' Pawan Kumar Bansal by a close margin in Chandigarh, scoring 1,90,489 votes.

Former TV actress and sitting BJP MP Smriti Irani led over Congress President Rahul Gandhi in Amethi by 45,000 votes. Gandhi conceded defeat against Irani in Amethi at a point when 13 more rounds of counting were left.

Other BJP candidates, Ravi Kishan (contesting Gorakhpur, UP) and Manoj Tiwari (contesting Delhi North-East) defeated Ram Bhuval Nishad of Samajwadi Party and Sheila Dixit of Congress, respectively.

Meanwhile, All India Trinamool Congress candidates from Birbhum, Basirhat, Jadavpur and Ghatal in West Bengal - Satabdi Roy, Nushrat Jahan, Mimi Chakraborty and Dev, respectively, also defeated BJP candidates Dudh Kumar Mondal, Sayantan Basu, Anupam Hazra and Bharati Ghosh in their respective constituencies.

Not every actor-turned-politician could work their celeb magic this election season. After quitting the BJP over differences, Shatrughan Sinha fought on a Congress ticket. His opponent and sitting BJP MP Ravi Shankar Prasad defeated Sinha and claimed the Patna Sahib, Bihar constituency that previously elected the latter twice to the Lower House. Sinha's wife Poonam, a Samajwadi Party candidate, too lost to BJP's Rajnath Singh in Lucknow while 57-year-old actress Jaya Prada, who fought on BJP's ticket from Rampur, lost to Mohammad Azam Khan of the Samajwadi Party.

Actress Urmila Matondkar, who joined the Congress on March 27, 2019, lost to BJP candidate and sitting MP Gopal Shetty. Shetty defeated Matondkar in Mumbai's North Lok Sabha seat by a considerable margin. Matondkar also wrote on Twitter, while counting was still in progress, that a complaint regarding alleged tampering with EVMs was put forth to the Election Commission.

Read her tweet here:

Actor-activist Prakash Raj, fought the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections as an independent candidate from Bengaluru Central. The Wanted actor has been vocal about his reservations about the Narendra Modi government, especially after his close friend and Kannada journalist Gauri Lankesh was allegedly murdered by Right-wing members. Raj also took to social media to express his disappointment over the loss. Read his message here:

Another Congress candidate Raj Babbar lost to rival BJP candidate Raj Kumar Chahar by a considerably huge margin. For the 2019 elections, party command had moved Babbar's allotted seat from Moradabad to Fatehpur Sikri, to make it easier for him to contest.

Meanwhile, in West Bengal's Asansol, actress and Trinamool MP Moon Moon Sen lost to BJP's union minister, singer Babul Supriyo.

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