Hamari Sansad Sammelan: Session 2 – What first-time MPs have to say

What is common between Sunita Duggal, Navneet Kaur Rana, Subrat Pathak, Raj Kumar Chahar, Shankar Lalwani and Tejasvi Surya? They all are first-time MPs in the 17th Lok Sabha. How does it feel to be the voice of people? At Session 2 of News Nation’s prestigious Hamari Sansad Sammelan, these first-time parliamentarians will talk about their struggles and record-breaking successes.

Sunita Duggal achieved a unique feat in 2019 General Elections. BJP’s Sunita Duggal became the sixth woman ever to be to be elected as an MP from Haryana so far. Duggal was the only woman candidate fielded by the BJP from Haryana, which has 10 Lok Sabha seats. Duggal won from the Sirsa reserved constituency. The bureaucrat-turned-politician defeated state Congress chief Ashok Tanwar by a margin of 3,09,918 votes.

Similar is the success of Navneet Kaur Rana. After losing 2014 polls, Rana defeated veteran Shiv Sena leader and two-time Member of Parliament (MP) Anandrao Adsul in Amravati constituency. Rana, a former Telugu actress, is also the only candidate from among the alliance partners of the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) who managed to emerge victorious in the 2019 Lok Sabha election.

Riding high on the saffron surge, BJP’s Subrat Pathak caused a massive upset in politically-sensitive Uttar Pradesh. Pathak stunned Samajwadi Party by defeating former Chief Minister and SP president Akhilesh Yadav’s wife Dimple Yadav from Kannauj. Pathak, who had also contested against Dimple Yadav in 2014, won by 12,353 votes in 2019 Lok Sabha Elections.

Another massive upset in Uttar Pradesh was in Fatehpur Sikri, where BJP’s Rajkumar Chahar defeated Uttar Pradesh Congress chief Raj Babbar by whopping margin of 4,95,065 votes.

Another first-timer, who won with mega margins nationally, is Shankar Lalwani. The former Indore Development Authority chairman, Lalwani defeated his nearest rival Pankaj Sanghvi of the Congress by over 5.37 lakh votes in MP’s Indore.

The star first-time MP is Tejasvi Surya, who won from Bangalore South. The 28-year-old lawyer had a victory margin of over 3 lakh votes over Congress’s BK Hariprasad.