Unlike the sweeping mandates of 2014 and 2019, when BJP got 282 and 303 seats respectively, the voters in the country limited the saffron party to 240 seats in the Lok Sabha elections 2024, leaving it in a position where it cannot form government on its own without the support of its NDA allies. This time party’s several bigwigs including several Union Ministers also suffered setback.
The BJP leaders including Smriti Irani, Arjun Munda and Ajay Mishra Teni were unseated in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
As per the Election Commission of India (ECI), out of 543 Lok Sabha constituencies, the BJP has secured 240 seats.
Here is the list of BJP bigwigs and Union Ministers who failed to secure wins this time:
Smriti Irani: Smriti Irani from Amethi had once garnered headlines for defeating Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in 2019. This time Irani lost to Congress candidate Kishori Lal Sharma by a margin of 1,67,196 votes.
Ajay Mishra Teni: Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Teni had garnered headlines amidst farmers protest following the Lakhimpur Kheri incident. Teni was defeated by the Samajwadi Party's Utkarsh Verma by over 34,329 votes from Kheri seat.
Arjun Munda: Union Tribal Affairs Minister Munda was defeated from Jharkhand's Khunti constituency by Congress candidate Kalicharan Munda by 1,49,675 votes.
Kailash Choudhary: In Rajasthan's Barmer, Minister of State for Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare, Kailash Choudhary, was defeated by Congress leader Ummeda Ram Beniwal by a margin of 4.48 lakh votes.
Rajeev Chandrasekhar: In Kerala's Thiruvananthapuram, the Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, lost to Congress stalwart Shashi Tharoor by over 16,077 votes.
Other BJP ministers who faced defeat:
Mahendra Nath Pandey, the Union Minister of Heavy Industries lost his Chandauli seat in Uttar Pradesh.
Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs, Kaushal Kishore lost against Samajwadi Party's RK Chaudhary by 70,292 votes in Mohanlalganj.
Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, the Union Minister of State for Consumer Affairs, Food, and Public Distribution, lost in UP's Fatehpur.
Rao Saheb Danve, the Minister of State for Railways, lost the Jalna seat in Maharashtra to Congress' Kalyan Vaijnath Rao Kale. Cabinet Minister Rk Singh lost to CPI(ML)'s Sudama Prasad from Bihar's Arrah.
Union Minister Sanjeev Balyan was defeated in the Muzaffarnagar Lok Sabha seat by Samajwadi Party's Harendra Singh Malik by a margin of over 24,000 votes.
V Muraleedharan, the Union Minister of State for External Affairs and Parliamentary Affairs, was defeated in Kerala's Thiruvananthapuram.
L Murugan, the Minister of State for Fisheries, Animal Husbandry, and Dairying, lost to DMK's A Raja in Tamil Nadu's Nilgiris by a substantial margin of 2,40,585 votes.
Nishith Pramanik, the Union Minister of State for Home Affairs, lost the Cooch Behar seat in West Bengal to TMC's Jagadish Chandra Basunia by over 39,000 votes.
Minister of State for Education Subhas Sarkar was defeated by Trinamool Congress candidate Arup Chakraborty in the Bankura Lok Sabha seat of West Bengal by a margin of 32,778 votes.
