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Pilibhit
Located in the Terai region of Uttar Pradesh, Pilibhit (latitude 28 degrees 37 minutes North and longitude 79 degrees 48 minutes East) houses a famous tiger reserve and is located near the Nepal border.
Demographic profile
As per the 2011 Census, the Pilibhit parliament seat has approximately 281,476 SC voters, making up around 16 per cent of the electorate, and 1,759 ST voters, constituting about 0.1 per cent. The literacy rate of the Lok Sabha constituency is 51.65 per cent.
Voters
According to the Election Commission of India (ECI), around 1,160,947 poeple voted in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections for Pilibhit constituency. While, there were approximately 1,759,223 voters in Pilibhit in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
Rural voters at Pilibhit parliament seat is approximately 1,447,841 which is around 82.3 per cent as per 2011 Census. Urban voters at Pilibhit parliament seat is approximately 311,382 which is around 17.7 per cent as per 2011 Census.
Political History
Political History
The Pilibhit Lok Sabha seat has been known as a Gandhi family seat but not the Congress one, in fact, it has repeatedly elected the Gandhis of BJP namely Maneka and Varun Gandhi. The mother-son duo broke ties with the Congress party after the death of Sanjay Gandhi and ever since have been actively targeting the Grand Old Party.
In 2019, Varun Gandhi won the Pilibhit LS seat by garnering over 59 per cent of the total votes and defeated his nearest rival from the Samajwadi Party Hemraj Verma. This time, in 2024, Varun has been denied a ticket by the BJP as in the past five years, the 44-year-old politician has been quite vocal against the Saffron Party and his vocal criticism has been quite an embarrassment for the party's high command, especially during the infamous 2021 Lakhimpur Kheri case in which multiple protesting farmers were killed after being hit by the BJP MP Ajay Mishra Teni's son's car.
Historically, Maneka Gandhi has been the most successful candidate from Pilibhit as she was from here six times, although on the ticket of various parties, including as an independent candidate, starting from 1989 LS elections. It can clearly be said that Maneka has nurtured the constituency over the past few decades now. As far as parties are concerned, Congress and BJP have been most successful with both of them winning on four occasions each. In fact, since 1996, Pilibhit has chosen either Maneka or Varun as their Lok Sabha representative. Notably, Pilibhit is a BJP bastion as the party hasn't lost from here since 2004 but the credit ideally goes to the mother-son duo.
In the 2022 UP Assembly polls, BJP won four out of the five Assembly segments that come under the Pilibhit LS seat while SP won the remaining one.
In the 2024 Lok Sabha Elections, BJP candidate Jitin Prasada emerged as the winning candidate from the Pilibhit constituency of Uttar Pradesh, with 607,158 votes and 52.3 per cent of vote share. Prasanda has been appointed Minister of State for Electronics and Information and Technology under the newly formed government. Bhagwat Gangwar, a popular OBC leader of the region trailed him with 442,223 votes and 38.09 per cent vote share.
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