Chandigarh Lok Sabha seat: Cong's Manish Tewari leading by 5,000 votes

Congress leader Manish Tewari is leading from Chandigarh by nearly 5,000 votes in the Lok Sabha elections, the latest data from Election Commission showed on Tuesday. 

As per the latest ECI trends, Tewari is leading nearest BJP rival Sanjay Tandon by 4,991 votes. Bahujan Samaj Party's Ritu Singh is placed third with a little over 5,000 votes. 

In the lone parliamentary seat of Chandigarh, the voter turnout was at 62.80 per cent in this election. 

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Tewari is currently the sitting MP from Anandpur Sahib in Punjab in the outgoing Lok Sabha. 

Tewari is a senior Congress leader and two-time member of parliament. Born on December 8, 1965 in Chandigarh, Tewari entered politics with the Congress's student wing National Students Union of India.

Later, he helmed the organisation from 1986 to 1993. He also led the Youth Congress from 1998 to 2000. After having lost the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, Tewari bounced back by winning from Ludhiana in 2009.

He defeated Shiromani Akali Dal's Gurcharan Singh Galib by over a lakh votes. In 2012, Tewari was inducted into the Manmohan Singh government and served as minister of information and broadcasting till 2014.

In 2014, he did not contest the parliamentary election due to ill health. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, he won from Anandpur Sahib.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, BJP's Kirron Kher had defeated Congress veteran Pawan Kumar Bansal by 46,000 votes. 

Around 642 million people voted in Lok Sabha elections held over seven phases in a mammoth six-week period.

According to the ECI, the BJP is currently leading on 236 seats while the Congress is ahead on 99 seats. The Samajwadi Party is leading on 37 while the Trinamool Congress is leading on 32 seats. 

Most exit polls had predicted a straight term for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with quite a few of them projecting a two-thirds majority for the ruling BJP-led NDA.