Amethi Lok Sabha seat: Huge upset for Smriti Irani on cards as KL Sharma leads by 50,000 votes

Union minister Smriti Zubin Irani is trailing behind her closest rival Kishori Lal Sharma of the Congress by a margin of 50,758 votes from the Amethi Lok Sabha seat in the general elections 2024 on Tuesday, June 4, according to the Election Commission of India website.

The INDIA bloc was leading in 42 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh and the BJP-led NDA in 37, according to trends on the Election Commission website.

INDIA bloc parties Samajwadi Party and the Congress were leading in 34 and eight seats, respectively, the election panel's data for polls to the 80 parliamentary constituencies in the state showed.

The BJP was leading in 35 seats and its ally RLD in two.

The Azad Samaj Party (Kanshiram) was leading in one seat.

Kishori Lal Sharma, a close associate and loyalist of the Gandhi family, is originally from Punjab's Ludhiana. He has been working for the Congress party in Amethi for years.

After Rahul Gandhi was named by the Congress as its candidate for the Rae Bareli Lok Sabha seat, Smriti Irani said the Congress conceded defeat from the constituency even before a vote was cast, adding that the opposition party would not have fielded a “proxy candidate” (Kishori Lal Sharma) if they were hopeful about the outcome of the polls.

Smriti Irani of the Bharatiya Janata Party had emerged as a giant-killer in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. She defeated the then Congress president Rahul Gandhi from the Nehru-Gandhi bastion Amethi by over 50,000 votes. Smriti Irani first entered the Rajya Sabha from Gujarat in 2011 and was re-elected in August 2017.

Within the party, she has held several key positions, including national general secretary, vice president of the BJP's Maharashtra Youth Wing, and national president of the BJP's Mahila Morcha. Born on March 23, 1976, Smriti Irani was a prominent figure in the television industry before entering politics. She is currently the Union minister for women and child development and textiles.

Between May 2014 and July 2016, she served as the minister of human resource development, and from July 2017 to May 2018, she managed the ministry of information and broadcasting.

The Amethi seat comprises five assembly segments: Tiloi, Salon, Jagdishpur, Gauriganj, and Amethi. It is a general seat. Voting for the Amethi seat was held on May 20, in the sixth phase of the Lok Sabha elections 2024.

During the election campaigns, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi promised to treat Amethi and Rae Bareli equally when it came to development if his party came to power at the Centre.

Rahul Gandhi contested the Lok Sabha poll from Rae Bareli, replacing his mother Sonia Gandhi. This was Irani's third election from Amethi after losing in 2014 to Rahul Gandhi by 1 lakh votes and winning in 2019 by a margin of around 55,000.In 2019, Irani had 468,514 voters, 49.7 per cent of which were voters, while Rahul Gandhi had 413,394 voters, 43.9 per cent of which were voters.