Know All About BJP's Gyaneshwar Patil And His Khandwa Win

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Gyaneshwar Patil secured another term in the party bastion Khandwa Lok Sabha seat, defeating nearest rival and Congress candidate Narendra Patel with a margin of a substantial 2,69,971 votes. While Patel secured over 5.9 lakh votes, Patil won a whopping 8.6 lakh votes, sealing his victory.

Patil got his first ticket in the 2021 by-election in the constituency following the demise of the then incumbent Nand Kumar Singh Chauhan. Mr Patil in the by-election defeated the Congress candidate by a margin of more than 82,000 votes. Notably, the majority of Mr Patil in the by-election was three times less than his precedent during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

The BJP candidate’s OBC background prompted the party to consider him for his second nomination despite his relatively low performance in 2021. Although the seat has seen both Congress and BJP influence in its history, the saffron party gained an edge during the last two decades.

Congress candidate Narendra Patel, who began his political career with the Youth Congress, currently serves as the General Secretary in the Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee.

The Khandwa seat has primarily been a battleground between two national parties: Congress and the BJP. While it used to be dominated by the Congress, BJP candidate Nandkumar Chauhan established the party’s dominance by winning the seat in 1996, 1998, 1999, and 2004. In the 2009 elections, Congress wrested the seat back, with Arun Yadav winning 3.9 lakh votes. However, the grand old party’s win did not last long as the Khandwa seat was taken over by the Modi wave. Since 2014, the Lok Sabha seat has witnessed a Modi wave with BJP’s Nandkumar Chauhan winning the seat twice with majority votes and defeating the Congress candidates.

Chauhan won again with a whopping 7.1 lakh votes, while Yadav secured 4.5 lakh votes. The subsequent election also had a similar result, with Chauhan securing the seat with 8.3 lakh votes while Congress’ Yadav won 5.6 lakh votes. In the by-polls, Gyaneshwar Patil won with 6.3 lakh votes, defeating Congress candidate Raj Narayan Purni, who won 5.5 lakh votes.

The saffron party has secured a clean sweep in the state of Madhya Pradesh, winning all its 29 Lok Sabha constituencies.