New Delhi: Of the 132 Lok Sabha seats where the BJP dropped its sitting MPs, the party has won 95, vindicating the leadership’s decision to some extent. On the other hand, in the 168 seats where incumbents were fielded again, the party emerged victorious in 111.
In other words, the party won 72 percent of the seats where the MPs were replaced, and 66 percent where the incumbents were fielded again. This indicates that replacing the candidate did help the BJP in curbing anti-incumbency, but only marginally. Overall, the BJP ended up losing one in every three seats it previously held.
The picture was a bit different for the party in 2019. Five years ago, the BJP had won 91.26 percent of the seats where incumbents were replaced, and 90.80 percent where the candidates were repeated.
ThePrint’s analysis of data from the 2019 and 2014 Lok Sabha elections shows that in nine out of 10 constituencies where incumbents were dropped, the BJP won. The party also performed equally well in seats where the incumbents were not dropped.
This year, data seems to vindicate to some extent the party high command’s decision to replace MPs based on anti-incumbency sentiment or the “winnability” factor.
In the run-up to the elections, the BJP dropping nearly half of its sitting MPs (43 percent) even led to some leaders switching sides, with incumbents like Rahul Kaswan from Rajasthan’s Churu and Ajay Nishad from Bihar’s Muzaffarpur fighting under the Congress banner. While Kaswan won his seat, Nishad ended up on the losing side.
It wasn’t just these two — dissent was brewing in about 100 seats over candidate choice. And that seems to have cost the BJP, considering the high number of seats thatincumbents could not hold.
The strategy behind dropping sitting MPs was “winnability”, according to party spokesperson R.P. Singh. “Decisions are taken based on surveys, feedback of party cadres, among other things, while deciding a candidate of the party,” he had told ThePrint last month.
However, political analyst Sandeep Shastri argued that dropping previous winners has more to do with fending off broader anti-incumbency.
“Once you are in power for 10 years, how do you deflect attention from the performance of the government where there could be some visible signs of anti-incumbency? One way to do it is to change candidates and project an impression of bringing new representatives, hoping this will offset any incumbency factor,” Shastri had said.
In 2024, the BJP had dropped a higher percentage of incumbents — 43.2 percent — than in either 2014 or 2019. The greatest number incumbents were dropped in the state of Uttar Pradesh — 16 — where the BJP had won 62 seats in 2019.
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Over half of sitting BJP MPs lost in UP
In UP, where the BJP has faced major losses this Lok Sabha poll, 26 of the incumbent MPs— more than half — lost their seats. Of the 16 seats where candidates were replaced, a third (5) were lost by the BJP. The party was able to win just 33 seats in the state this year.
In other states with at least seven BJP MPs, the highest percentage of dropped MPs was in Delhi (85.7 percent). Except for Manoj Tiwari from North East Delhi, the remaining six sitting MPs were dropped. The BJP has swept all seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi this year, too.
In Chhattisgarh, which has 11 Lok Sabha seats in all, the BJP dropped seven of its nine MPs (77.7 percent). It retained all its seats and won one extra.
In Haryana, the party had dropped six of its 10 MPs (60 percent). Here, the BJP tasted defeat in four of the six seats where incumbents were dropped. In the other four seats, all incumbents except for Rohtak MP Arvind Kumar Sharma won.
Among other major states, the BJP replaced over 50 percent of its sitting MPs in Karnataka (14 of 24), Rajasthan (14 of 24) and Gujarat (14 of 26), and exactly half in Madhya Pradesh (14 of 28).
In 2019, the party had swept the latter three states and won 25 of 28 seats in Karnataka. Of the 56 incumbents replaced in these four states where the BJP had a near sweep last time, 44 have won this time. Of the 46 seats in these four states where the incumbents were repeated, 39 won.
In Assam, which has 14 Lok Sabha seats in all, the BJP this year replaced five of its nine MPs. Of the nine seats the party has now won, five seats are those where the incumbents were changed.
Another surprising pattern has emerged from the BJP’s choice of candidates.
As many as 53 of the 132 Lok Sabha MPs (40 percent) dropped this year won their seats in 2019 with a margin of at least 3 lakh votes. This includes eight MPs whose victory margin was between 5 and 6 lakh votes.
Dropping these MPs doesn’t seem to have affected the party’s prospects. The BJP has won 44 of these 53 seats, as the likes of former Haryana CM Manohar Lal Khattar and Union minister Bhupendra Yadav — replacements in these seats — registered victories.
Among the incumbents dropped, Sanjay Bhatia of Karnal, who had won by 6.56 lakh votes in 2019, was replaced by Khattar, who has now won the seat by 2.3 lakh votes.
Bhilwara’s Subhash Chandra Baheria, who won by 6.1 lakh votes in 2019, was replaced with Damodar Agarwal, who has now won the seat by 3.5 lakh votes.
Hans Raj Hans, the North West Delhi MP who won by 5.5 lakh votes last time, was moved to contest from Faridkot, Punjab. Hans, however, failed to win his seat and camefifth.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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