Bam's withdrawal behind record Indore win: Kailash

INDORE: Indore MP Shankar Lalwani won by a record margin of 11.7 lakh votes, but it was NOTA's nearly 2.2 lakh votes that stole the limelight. Now, BJP general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya has credited Lalwani's big victory to the Congress candidate Akshay Kanti Bam's withdrawal.
"In the victory of 11.75 lakh votes, Akshayji's bold decision played a vital role," Vijayvargiya said at an event, while Bam was on stage.Urging the gathering to applaud the former Congress candidate, Vijayvargiya said: "I think Shankar Lalwaniji has won by such a big margin that no one can beat his record. The credit for this goes to Akshayji."
The 2024 Indore Lok Sabha election broke three records - maximum votes by any party (BJP), over 12.2 lakh; highest NOTA votes, 2.18 lakh, and biggest victory margin.
Bam had pulled out of the contest on the last date of withdrawal of nominations, leaving Congress unrepresented in the high profile Indore seat for the first time ever.
He had even campaigned for Congress earlier that day and then vanished, only to pop up in a selfie with Vijayvargiya just before withdrawing from the fray.
Congress called him a 'traitor' and the fiasco didn't go down well with many Indoreans.
Even eight-time MP and former Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan expressed her concern and surprise.
BSP vote-share rise in state costs Cong 2 seats
The ruling BJP gained around 1.3% in vote share - from 58% in 2019 to 59.3% in 2024 - while Congress lost 2.1% in the recently concluded Lok Sabha election.
Interestingly, BSP, which drew a blank nationwide, gained close to 1% vote share in MP, which turned out to be the cause of defeat for Congress on two seats.
Congress's vote share dropped from 34.5% in 2019 to 32.4% in an election in which it was wiped out of the scoreboard. BSP, on the other hand, improved its share from 2.4% to 3.3%, securing over 12.4 lakh votes, and turning out to be Congress's nemesis in Satna and Morena.
In Satna, Narayan Tripathi - who switched from BJP to BSP just before the polls - cut away 1.85 lakh votes, while BJP's victory margin over Congress was 84,949. Likewise in Morena, BSP candidate Ramesh Garg won nearly 1.8 lakh votes, and BJP's victory margin was only 52,530. There were two other seats where BSP bagged more than 1 lakh votes -Rewa (1.1 lakh) and Khajuraho (2.3 lakh). And BSP came second at the only two places where the main opposition was absent - Khajuraho, where the Samajwadi Party candidate's nomination was rejected because she didn't sign the form, and Indore, where the Congress candidate ditched the party. In Indore's one-sided contest, BSP bagged 51,659 votes. In 21 of MP's 29 constituencies, BSP came third.