Narendra Modi trounced his Congress rival Madhusudan Mistry by a staggering 5,70,128 votes in Vadodara but failed to break the record of highest margin of victory set by Anil Basu of the CPI(M).
The BJP’s prime ministerial candidate’s margin of victory in his first outing in the Lok Sabha polls is the second best after Mr. Basu, a seven-time MP, who scripted history winning the Arambagh seat in West Bengal by 5,92,502 votes, 22,374 more than Mr. Modi, in 2004.
The earlier record was held by LJP chief Ramvilas Paswan, who as a Janata Dal candidate, had won the Hajipur seat in Bihar by a whopping 5,04,448 votes in 1989.
Mr. Paswan, whose party is now in the NDA, had then broken his own record set in 1977 when he had won the seat as Bhartiya Lok Dal nominee by a margin of 4,24,545 votes.
After Mr. Paswan in 1989 and Mr. Basu in 2004, Modi is the third politician to have won a seat by a margin of over 5 lakh votes.
