Chandigarh Lok Sabha Election 2019 Result: Kirron Kher outrunning Pawan Kumar Bansal by just over 7,000 votes

• There’s only one seat up for grabs in Chandigarh and it’s going to be a close call between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Congress.
• The fight is between the BJP candidate, Kirron Kher, and Congress candidate, Pawan Kumar Bansal.
• Kher is hoping that her star power and the ‘Modi wave’ will carry her through to a win.
• For Bansal, this may be the last chance to prove his political prowess.

Chandigarh only accounts for one seat of the Lok Sabha election 2019. What started out as a contest between 33 candidates is now a match between the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) to bring it home.

C-Voter and Times Now VMR exit polls predict that this time around Chandigarh is likely to go back to Congress but India Today Axis claims that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is more likely to win.


^{Data from Election Commission}

Either way, it’s still going to be a close call. The majority will be decided by which party manages to go further, beyond the 40% vote share mark.

BJP’s celebrity-turned-politician candidate, Kirron Kher, is pitted against Congress’ Pawan Kumar Bansal and Harmohan Dhawan, the candidate from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).

Kher is currently leading the vote share but margin is growing thinner, currently recording a margin of 3,756.

Kher glides the ‘Modi wave’

The former Bollywood star, Kher, promised to improve the sanitation and cleanliness situation in Chandigarh when she won the Lok Sabha election in 2014. Instead the city saw its name drop from second to 20th place on top clean cities index — the Swachh Survekshan.

But Kher argues that she’s done more in her five years of power than Bansal in his 15 years as a Member of Parliament. By her own admission, the ‘Modi wave’ will be one of the primary factors that will help her sail through to a win in the city.

Dhawan called out Kher for being a ‘parachute dropped’ candidate who only showed during the election and was found to be absent during much of her tenure.


During the last Lok Sabha Election in 2014, Kher scraped past Bansal to secure the win by a record margin of 69,642 votes and the popularity of AAP’s Gul Panag cut the votes that would have gone to Congress.


AAP’s popularity petering out in the union territory could push those votes back to Congress, especially since a lot of the AAP candidates that people voted for in 2014 are now members of Congress.


Bansal’s political future hangs in the balance at the age of 78. Even his claim to this year’s election faced stiff competition from Navjot Kaur Sidhu and Manish Tiwari. This may be the last chance to prove his political prowess.