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The General Elections 2014 is finally over and over 500 mn voters cast their votes across 5 weeks to elect their representatives for the next 5 years in the largest democratic exercise ever to take place anywhere in the world. The elections this time also witnessed a record breaking 66% voting turnout with Narendra Modi of the BJP getting the people's mandate to represent the country as it's next Prime Minister.
Here's a look at 7 interesting facts of Verdict 2014
1) Narendra Modi set a new record by winning the Vadodara seat by a record margin of 5.7 lakh votes. However, three other BJP winners crossed the 5 lakh margin mark. Rtd. General VK Singh from Gaziabad won by 5.67 lakh votes. CR Patil from Navsari won by 5.58 lakh votes and Darshana Jardosh won the Surat seat by 5.33 lakhs.
2) The last time a party crossed the half way mark on its own was in 1984 (Congress got 414 seats). That was also the last time when the second party in the race failed to get at least 10% seats.
3) In UP, BJP got 73 seats. Of the remaining seven seats, five went to Mulayam Singh Yadav’s family. The other two were won by the Gandhi family. Clearly, only dynasty loyalty could help congress and the SP to retain their home seats even as their parties got decimated across the state.
4) Only three out of the 28 cabinet ministers won. Many didn’t even come second. Karti Chidambaram, son of P Chidambaram, came a distant fourth and will lose his election deposit.
5) Congress failed to open its account in as many as 10 states.They failed to reach double digits in the rest of the states.
6) Gulam Raza, an independent, lost the Ladakh seat by a mere 36 votes to BJP’s Thupstan Chhewang
7) All prominent ex-journalists who fought the elections lost. Ashutosh, Ashish Khaitan, Shazia Ilmi, Anitha Pratap, all from the debutant Aam Aadmi party failed to impress the voters.
