Lok Sabha 2019 constituency: In Gonda, Mankapur royals have won seven times

The former royals of the Mankapur have won from the Gonda parliamentary constituency in Uttar Pradesh seven times in the past and this year the scion of the princely estate is in the fray again.

Kirtivardhan Singh will contest from the Gonda Lok Sabha seat as a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate. He won the seat in 1998 on a Samajwadi Party (SP) ticket for the first time and joined the BJP just before the 2014 Lok Sabha election and was elected again.

Kirtivardhan’s father Anand Singh fought and won the Gonda seat for the first time in 1971. In 1991, Anand Singh again contested from this seat but as an SP candidate and lost to the BJP’s Brijbhushan Singh and in 1996 to Brijbhushan’s wife Ketki Devi Singh.

The Congress party has also won eight times since elections were first held in 1952, the BJP four times and SP twice from Gonda, a rural constituency dominated by Muslims, Brahmins and Kurmis.

Uttar Pradesh, which sends the maximum number of members to Parliament at 80, will go to polls in all the seven phases of the Lok Sabha election 2019. Votes will be counted on May 23.

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Here are a few details about the Gonda Lok Sabha seat:

State: Uttar Pradesh

Name of the Lok Sabha constituency: Gonda

Polling date: May 6

2019 candidates: Vinod Kumar (SP), Kirti Vardhan Singh (BJP), Krishna Patel (Congress)

Sitting MP, party: Kirti Vardhan Singh, BJP

Winning margin in 2014: 160,412

Runner up name, party: Nandita Shukla, SP

Number of voters in 2014: 873,732

Percentage of votes polled in 2014: 51.07%

Number of women voters in 2014: 775,659

Number of polling booths in 2014: 1,647