It’s curtains for 5-time consecutive Lok Sabha winners

By Saurabh Katkurwar

New Delhi, April 18 (IANS) Four veteran politicians -- L.K. Advani, Sumitra Mahajan, Kamal Nath and Yogi Adityanath -- who were elected to the Lok Sabha on five or more successive occasions since 1998 will not be seen in the next Lok Sabha.

Thirteen political leaders who were MPs in 2014 had never lost a single Lok Sabha election since 1998. Now, seven of them are out of the fray while former Parliamentary Affairs Minister S. Ananth Kumar is dead.

Former Prime Minister and Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) leader H.D. Deve Gowda, Samajwadi Party (SP) veteran Mulayam Singh, K.H. Muniyappa, Bhartruhari Mahatab and Anant Geete are the remaining five who are in the race to enter the Lok Sabha this time.

The political yatra for the 91-year-old BJP patriarch Advani, who helped take the party's tally from 2 in 1984 to 85 in the Lok Sabha in 1989, has been denied a ticket from his seat Gandhinagar in Gujarat.

He represented the Gujarat capital in the Lok Sabha since 1989 except when he chose not to contest the 1996 elections over the Jain hawala diary controversy.

Congress leader and Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath has represented the Chhindwara constituency nine times from 1980, except in 1996-98 (11th Lok Sabha) when his wife Alka Nath was elected.

As he was sworn in as Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister in December, his son Nakul Nath has filed his nomination from the Congress bastion.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) bagged the Indore seat for the first time after Sumitra Mahajan was elected from there in 1989 -- and remained undefeated.

However, the longest serving woman MP is not contesting this time, miffed over the delay in the announcement of her candidature.

Arjun Charan Sethi, eight-time Biju Janata Dal (BJD) MP from Bhadrak in Odisha who defected to the BJP recently, will not contest this time. The BJP has fielded his son Abhimanyu Sethi instead.

Former Minister and seven-time BJP MP from Chhattisgarh Ramesh Bais has been shown the door by the party this time - on the age factor.

Ananth Kumar, who was credited with the growth of the BJP in Karnataka, passed away in November last year. He was a six-time Lok Sabha lawmaker from Bengaluru South since 1996. The BJP has fielded Young Turk Tejasvi Surya.

Another big name in the list of record-holders is Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.

The firebrand Hindutva leader was elected from Gorakhapur in 1998 and kept winning from there. He resigned from the Lok Sabha after the BJP took power in the state in 2017 to become the Chief Minister.

The BJD has replaced five-time MP Prasanna Kumar Patasani with former Mumbai Police Commissioner Arup Patnaik from the Bhubaneswar Lok Sabha constituency.

There are five members in the lower house with five consecutive wins who will contest this time as well.

Deve Gowda is contesting from Tumakuru, hoping to enter the Lok Sabha for the sixth time. He gave up his traditional Hassan seat to his grandson Prajwal Revanna.

K.H. Muniyappa, a Minister during UPA rule, has represented Kolar constituency since 1991.

Bhartruhari Mahtab is a five-time BJD MP from Cuttack.

Anant Geete, Union Minister and Shiv Sena MP from 1998, has been fielded from Raigad - the constituency he has represented since 2004.

Mulayam Singh Yadav has been winning every Lok Sabha election since 1998.

In 2014, he won from both Mainpuri and Azamgarh but retained the latter seat.

(Saurabh Katkurwar can be contacted at saurabh.k@ians.in)