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ELECTIONS '96

The Big Losers

AJIT SINGH

Never has a member of Chaudhary Charan Singh's family lost Baghpat in the jat heartland in western Uttar Pradesh, Chaudhary Charan Singh won it thrice, in 1977, 1980 and 1984, while his only son Ajit Singh won it in 1989, 1991 and 1996. This time, making political history is former V P Singh/Laloo Prasad Yadav groupie Som Pal, who joined the BJP only last December. Som Pal insisted on the Baghpat seat and it was because of his obduracy that the BJP pulled out of an electoral pact with Ajit Singh's Bharat Kisan Kamgar Party. Som Pal had the last laugh: he defeated the most influential jat in UP by 44,370 votes.

KANSHI RAM

The Bahujan Samaj Party leader lost to Naqli Singh (BJP) by 59,836 votes in Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh. Before the general election, he moved from Hoshiarpur, Punjab, where he had won a berth to the Lok Sabha in 1996. This is not the first time the BSP supremo has tasted defeat. In the famous 1988 by-election from Allahabad, he came in third after V P Singh (Janata Dal) and Sunil Shastri (Congress). By losing the Saharanapur seat, Kanshi Ram has suffered a serious setback in his constant attempts to influence the drift of national politics.

ARJUN SINGH

When he lost Satna in 1996 to the Bahujan Samaj Party, no one familiar with Arjun Singh's power and influence in Madhya Pradesh could believe it. The Raja of Churhat moved to Hoshangabad this time on BSP chief Kanshi Ram's advice. But it was always going to be a tough fight. Sartaj Singh, the sitting BJP MP, had won the seat thrice; he is enormously popular, and Arjun Singh was always seen as an outsider. For the man who is said to have forced the Jain Commission issue on the Congress party and hence this election, Arjun Singh's loss by over 69,000 votes must end any hope he entertains of becoming prime minister.

N D TIWARI

Narain Dutt Tiwari won the Nainital seat in 1980 and after a brief tenure at the Centre in Indira Gandhi's government, returned to the hurly-burly of UP politics shortly before her death in 1984. He was rebuffed by Nainital voters in the May 1991 election, but won an impressive victory as the Indira Congress leader in 1996, defeating the BJP, BSP, SP and Congress candidates. He won 307, 449 votes. Taking on the BJP's Ila Pant whose husband K C Pant had won it in 1962, 1967 and 1971 was always going to be tough, and his defeat by 16,000 odd votes was no surprise in the end.

PRAMOD MAHAJAN

The BJP's never-at-a-loss-for-a-word general secretary is not the invincible electoral warrior that most people believe him to be. In 1984, he took on Gurudas Kamat in the Bombay North East seat, and lost by 15 % of the vote. In 1996, he took advantage of a fractured Opposition -- Kamat won 237,262 votes while Ramdas Athavale of the RPI won 222,519 votes -- Mahajan won 428,825 votes and the seat. This time, without the RPI candidate to divide the anti-BJP vote, Mahajan was always going to struggle to win.

SURESH KALMADI

Bad timing did the gung-ho Pune leader in. He believed his efforts to help the BJP form an alternative government after the Congress withdrew support to I K Gujral last November would cost him a party nomination. He chose to break away from a party he had served all his political life, and floated his candidature in Pune after running through a gauntlet of humiliating encounters with the Shiv Sena. Apart from 1996, Kalmadi had never participated in a Lok Sabha contest, preferring the Rajya Sabha route -- created by his mentor Sharad Pawar -- to enter Parliament. The anti-incumbency wave against his BJP-Sena sponsors, Pawar's determination to teach him a lesson and the electorate's indifference to a man who had done a fair bit for the constituency finally sealed his fate. By over 93,000 votes.

JASWANT SINGH

The man would have been finance minister was a surprising casualty. Twice a winner in Chittorgarh, the former army major -- a most unusual member of the BJP -- was surprised by his farmer rival. Jaswant Singh had won the 1996 election convincingly -- 52.30 % to 41.91%. This means the finance minister in a Vajpayee government, if ABV is invited by the President to form a government, would be the rather intimidating, backward-looking Professor Murli Manohar Joshi.

Elections '98

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