BJP retains Ghaziabad bastion, wins GB Nagar by 500,000 votes

BJP wins Ghaziabad & Gautam Budhha Nagar seats with comfortable margins. Atul Garg & Mahesh Sharma secure victories. Ghaziabad saw 49.88% turnout.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) extended its winning streak on both Ghaziabad and Gautam Budhha Nagar seats with the party candidates registering comfortable wins over their opponents.

Celebrations underway at the BJP hadquarters in Delhi on Tuesday. (Sanchit Khanna/HT Photo)

In Ghaziabad, BJP’s Atul Garg defeated his Congress rival Dolly Sharma by a margin of 336,965 votes, and party’s Mahesh Sharma defeated his Samajwadi Party rival by a huge margin of 559,472 votes.

This was the fourth consecutive win for the BJP in Ghaziabad and Sharma’s third consecutive win from the Gautam Buddha Nagar seat which comprises Noida.

In Ghaziabad, 8195 voters opted for NOTA option, according to official data shared by Ghaziabad administration.

The Ghaziabad constituency had a total of 2,945,487 electors, of which 1,469,260 exercised their franchise on April 26. The constituency recorded a turnout of 49.88%, according to the Election Commission data.

“I am thankful to people of Ghaziabad who for me. This is the win of PM Modi and the hard work of party workers. I believe that efforts of PM Modi and Yogi Adityanath have contributed 100% towards my win here,” said Garg.

In 2009, BJP’s Rajnath Singh won the Ghaziabad seat by a margin of 90,681 votes. In 2014, BJP candidate and former army chief Gen VK Singh (retired) won by a margin of 567,260 votes and retained the seat in 2019 by a margin of 501,500 votes.

In Gautam Buddha Nagar, Sharma had taken early lead, and by Tuesday afternoon, the sitting MP expanded the lead by nearly five lakh votes.

Sharma, who polled 559,472 votes had a massive vote share of 59.69%, according to the Election Commission data.

“We were hopeful of our victory and confident of winning by a huge margin. I look forward to working for the welfare of the people of Gautam Buddha Nagar,” said Sharma after visiting a temple in Noida Sector 19 on Tuesday evening.

Mahendra Singh Nagar attributed his loss to lack of support from the Rajput community.

“We were hoping that the Rajput community will vote in our favour, but it turned out that we haven’t got any support from them. This is primarily the reason for my defeat,” he said.