Lok Sabha 2019 constituency: Will BJP retain UP’s Chandauli seat

The BJP wrested the Chandauli parliamentary constituency back in 2014 under the Modi wave after 16 years.

The Bharatiya Janata Party had won the Chandauli Lok Sabha seat for the first time in 1991 and its leader Anand Ratna Maurya represented it in Parliament for three terms till 1998.

No party has been successful for the second time after 1998 as the Samajwadi Party won the Lok Sabha election in 1999, Bahujan Samaj Party in 2004 and the Akhilesh Yadav-led party in 2009. The BJP’s Uttar Pradesh unit chief Mahendra Nath Pandey won it back for his party in 2014.

Barely 30km from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Varanasi parliamentary constituency, Chandauli is very backward in terms of development.

Mughalsarai, Sakaldiha, Saiyadraja, Ajagara and Shivpur are the assembly segments under the Chandauli Lok Sabha seat.

Brahmins and Kshatriyas are followed by non-Yadav OBC communities like Lodh, Maurya and Rajbhar in this constituency.

Uttar Pradesh, which sends the maximum number of members to Parliament at 80, will go to polls in all the seven phases of the Lok Sabha election 2019. Votes will be counted on May 23.

READ: All about Lok Sabha elections 2019

Here are a few details about the Chandauli Lok Sabha seat:

State: Uttar Pradesh

Name of the Lok Sabha constituency: Chandauli

Polling date: May 19

2019 candidates: Mahendra Nath Pandey (BJP), Sanjay Chauhan (SP), Shivkanya Kushwaha (Congress)

Sitting MP, party: Mahendra Nath Pandey, BJP

Winning margin in 2014: 156,756

Runner up name, party: Arun Kumar, BSP

Number of voters in 2014: 980,572

Percentage of votes polled in 2014: 58.75%

Number of women voters in 2014: 741,511

Number of polling booths in 2014: 1,601