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Pilibhit Constituency, UP
Located in the Terai region of Uttar Pradesh, Pilibhit houses a famous tiger reserve and is located near the Nepal border.
The Pilibhit Lok Sabha seat has been known as a Gandhi family seat but not the Congress one, in fact, it has repeatedly elected the Gandhis of BJP namely Maneka and Varun Gandhi. The mother-son duo broke ties with the Congress party after the death of Sanjay Gandhi and ever since have been actively targeting the Grand Old Party.
In 2019, Varun Gandhi won the Pilibhit LS seat by garnering over 59% of the total votes and defeated his nearest rival from the Samajwadi Party Hemraj Verma. This time, in 2024, Varun has been denied a ticket by the BJP as in the past five years, the 44-year-old politician has been quite vocal against the Saffron Party and his vocal criticism has been quite an embarrassment for the party's high command, especially during the infamous 2021 Lakhimpur Kheri case in which multiple protesting farmers were killed after being hit by the BJP MP Ajay Mishra Teni's son's car.
This time BJP has fielded Congress turncoat Jitin Prasad, who was once considered close to Rahul Gandhi, while SP has fielded Bhagwat Gangwar, a popular OBC leader of the region. The Bahujan Samaj Party has betted on Anis Ahmed Khan who has unsuccessfully contested from Pilibhit LS seat on multiple occasions.
Historically, Maneka Gandhi has been the most successful candidate from Pilibhit as she was from here six times, although on ticket of various parties, including as an independent candidate, starting from 1989 LS elections. It can clearly be said that Maneka has nurtured the constituency over the past few decades now. As far as parties are concerned, Congress and BJP have been most successful with both of them winning on four occasions each. In fact, since 1996, Pilibhit has chosen either Maneka or Varun as their Lok Sabha representative. Notably, Pilibhit is a BJP bastion as the party hasn't lost from here since 2004 but the credit ideally goes to the mother-son duo.
In the 2022 UP Assembly polls, BJP won four out of the five Assembly segments that come under the Pilibhit LS seat while SP won the remaining one.
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