LS poll: Highest & smallest winning margins

The 2004 Lok Sabha elections threw up some interesting results -- from a smallest two digit victory margin to the largest touching over five lakh mark.

• Janta Dal (United) candidate P Pookunhikoya, who contested the election from Lakshawdeep constituency in 2004, clinched the seat by a margin of mere 71 votes from his rival Congress's P M Sayeed, who received 15,526 votes as compared to his 15,597 votes.
• Following Pookunhikoya is BJP's Babubhai Katara who won with a margin of 361 votes from Dohad in Gujarat. These two were lone candidates in the last elections who won their seats by a margin of less than 500 votes.
• While there were more than 40 winning Member of Parliament who won their seats with a margin of less than 10,400 votes in the last LS elections. They include Congress party's Sriprakash Jaiswal from Kanpur and Milind Deora from South Mumbai seat, Janta Dal (United) candidate from Muzaffarpur (Bihar) George Fernandes and Bahujan Samaj Party's Ramakant Yadav from Azamgarh (Uttar Pradesh).
• In the 2004 elections, there were 50 candidates who won their constituencies with a margin of more than 1,96,000 votes and the highest margin of victory touched 5,92,502 mark.
• CPM's candidate from Arambagh in West Bengal's Hooghly district Anil Basu, won the election by a highest margin of 5.92 lakh votes by securing 7.44 votes and defeating BJP's Swapan Kumar Nandi who got 1,51,962 votes.
• Candidates who won by a margin of about two lakh votes included SP supremo Mulayam Singh, his son Akhilesh Yadav, Somnath Chatterjee from CPI-M, Congress party's Rahul Gandhi, BJP's Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L K Advani and Shivraj Singh Chouhan, NCP's chief Sharad Pawar and Ram Vilas Paswan of LJP among other.