Highest ever victory margin in Indian politics-10 lakh votes?

Congress candidate Akshay Kanti Bamb had withdrawn his name on the last day of withdrawal of nominations.

BJP leader Shankar Lalwani on Tuesday won the Indore Lok Sabha seat by a margin of more than 10 lakh votes. Meanwhile, the NOTA (none of the above) option also created a likely record.

Lalwani, who is the sitting MP from Indore, received 12,26,751 votes and defeated his nearest rival, NOTA, by 10,08,077 votes. Bahujan Samaj Party's Sanjay stood in third place with 51,659 votes.

A BJP leader told NDTV that Lalwani's victory margin is probably the "highest" in the country's electoral history. In 2019, Shankar Lalwani won from the Indore constituency and became the member of parliament.

Nota allows the voters to officially register a “vote of rejection" for all candidates contesting in an election. It was introduced in September 2013 following a Supreme Court decision. Indore also witnessed as many as 2,18,674 voters choosing the NOTA option, which was the second highest in this seat.

According to  Indian Express, the NOTA option was introduced for the first time in the general elections in 2014, and the highest before this was 51,660 votes in Bihar’s Gopalganj.

Congress candidate Akshay Kanti Bam had withdrawn his name on the last day of withdrawal of nominations. Subsequently, he joined the BJP.

As a result, BJP candidate and sitting Lok Sabha Member Shankar Lalwani had received a walkover practically. Since then, the Congress had been urging voters to cast the maximum number of votes in the NOTA. In 2019, the Congress had got 31% of the votes in Indore, and NOTA 0.31%.

The Congress’s campaign for NOTA votes included posters, torch rallies and meetings, and social media chats, ahead of May 13 polling. It urged voters to teach the BJP “a lesson”, over its candidate Akshay Kanti Bam withdrawing at the last minute.

The BJP has been winning the Indore seat since 1989. Before Lalwani, Sumitra Mahajan, who served as the Speaker of the Lok Sabha from 2014 to 2019, won from Indore for eight consecutive terms.

Indore is Madhya Pradesh’s biggest Lok Sabha constituency with 25.13 lakh voters.