Pollsters have had a daunting task to gauge the mood of the nation during the seven-phased Lok Sabha election that has just ended and predict who will be ruling at the Centre for the next five years. Their exit poll surveys indicate a continuity in the political leadership of the country, predicting the return of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to his third consecutive term in office — a record set by the first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.
However, there are a few Lok Sabha constituencies whose voters have been far more accurate than the pollsters in reflecting what India collectively thinks during elections. These Lok Sabha constituencies have been bellwether, showing the way. Whether they keep their track record intact will be clear by Monday evening, but these are certainly the constituencies whose trends from the vote-counting centres would be watched out by both contenders and experts alike.
Valsad, Gujarat
This Lok Sabha seat in Gujarat came into being in 1957 and it has never predicted an election wrong for the Lok Sabha. Reserved for Scheduled Tribes, Valsad is one of Gujarat’s 26 parliamentary constituencies. It has consistently elected representatives from the party that eventually forms the central government.
Home to approximately 14.95 lakh voters, including the Dhodiya, Koonkana, Varli, Koli, and OBC communities, Valsad voted BJP’s Manibhai Chaudhary to the Lok Sabha, which saw the party leading a new coalition — the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) — to secure power at the Centre. Chaudhary replicated this success in 1999 and so did the NDA.
The change of fortunes for the Vajpayee government in 2004 was accurately captured by the voters in Valsad against the background of pollsters and analysts predicting a return of the BJP-led alliance to power. Valsad voted for the Congress’s Kishan Bhai Patel. At the Centre, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) assumed power. Patel’s re-election in 2009 coincided with the UPA’s sustained hold on power.
When the Modi wave created a groundswell for the BJP in 2014, Valsad chose BJP’s KC Patel, who won the seat with a margin exceeding 2 lakh votes, paralleling the NDA’s decisive majority in the Lok Sabha. Patel repeated his success in 2019 with a bigger margin, defeating Chaudhari Jitubhai of the Congress by over 3.50 lakh votes. The Modi government returned with a greater majority than it had in the 2014 polls at the Centre.
Both the BJP and the Congress changed their candidates in Valsad this time. The BJP fielded Dhaval Patel against the Congress’s Anant Patel.
Mandi, Himachal Pradesh
Cradled in the Himalayas, Manid has predicted the Lok Sabha election correctly from the first national polls in 1952, barring two aberrations in 1989 and 1996. The BJP won the seat in 1989 but not at the national level. However, the defeat of the Congress from the seat was in sync with the party’s ouster from power at the Centre in the post-Bofors scandal election.
Like a majority of the Lok Sabha seats in the early decades of Independence, this Himachal Pradesh constituency was a Congress stronghold before it shifted its allegiance to the Janata Party in the 1977 Lok Sabha election that saw the fall of mighty Indira Gandhi in the national polls.
Mandi went back to the Congress in 1980 as Indira Gandhi made an emphatic return to power at the Centre. A constituency, with a voter demographic dominated by Rajputs and Scheduled Castes, signalled the Congress’s loss in 1989.
In 1998, when the BJP-led NDA came to power at the Centre, Mandi voted for the BJP for the first time, preferring its nominee Maheshwar Singh over the Congress stalwart Virbhadra Singh’s wife Pratibha Singh. The BJP maintained its hold in 1999.
But Pratibha Singh reclaimed the seat in 2004 for the Congress as the UPA assumed power at the Centre in 2004. It was Virbhadra Singh who won this seat in 2009. The Congress-led coalition maintained its hold at the Centre before Mandi elected Ram Swaroop Sharma of the BJP in 2014 and 2019.
This seat saw an interesting contest this time as it is currently held by a party that is not in power at the Centre and the ruling party is jostling to reclaim it. Sharma passed away in 2021 and Pratibha Singh won the by-poll. The BJP fielded actor-turned-politician Kangana Ranaut from this seat while the Congress went with Vikramaditya Singh, the son of incumbent MP Pratibha Singh and late Virbhadra Singh.
Ranchi, Jharkhand
Ranchi, Jharkhand’s capital, has been a reliable political barometer, correctly predicting the central victor except on two occasions since 1952. It voted for an Independent candidate in 1957 and a BJP candidate in 1991 when the Congress formed the government at the Centre.
With a voter base of 16.48 lakh, predominantly Kurmis, Vaishyas, and upper castes, the constituency has favoured the BJP’s Ram Tahal Choudhary in five elections—1991, 1996, 1998, 1999, and 2014.
In 2004 and 2009, the Congress’s Subodh Kant Sahay took the seat for the victorious coalition.
In 2014, Sahay faced defeat by nearly two lakh votes. In 2019, he lost to the BJP’s Sanjay Seth by a bigger margin (2.79 lakh votes). Interestingly, Choudhary, who ran as an Independent candidate after the BJP denied him the ticket, couldn’t help Sahay, who hoped for a split in the saffron party’s vote bank.
This time, Seth is facing Yashaswhini Sahay, the daughter of Congress veteran Subodh Kant Sahay.
Faridabad, Haryana
Faridabad has consistently voted for the party that formed the central government since 1991, when the Congress won this seat. In 1996, the BJP won the Faridabad seat and emerged the largest party in the Lok Sabha to form a short-lived 13-day government at the Centre. Vajpayee had resigned as the prime minister before the floor test.
In 1998 and 1999, the BJP’s Chaudhary Ramchandra Bainda captured the seat, coinciding with his party’s rise to power at the Centre.
In a twist of events, the Congress’s Avtar Singh Bhadana clinched the Faridabad seat in 2004, and his party surprised many experts to take the reins at the Centre. Bhadana secured the seat again in 2009, in line with the UPA’s return to power.
The 2014 elections saw the BJP’s Krishan Pal Gurjar defeat Bhadana as the Modi government took the centrestage. The rivals contested again in 2019, with Gurjar registering a bigger victory.
Gurjar faced former Haryana minister Mahender Pratap Singh in this year’s election.
East Delhi
This seat has been a BJP stronghold since 1991, losing the seat only twice — 2004 and 2009 when the Congress formed coalition governments at the Centre. Sandeep Dikshit, the son of former Delhi CM Sheila Dikshit, won the East Delhi seat for the Congress in these two elections.
But Dikshit finished third in 2014, when his Congress party was decimated in the polls securing only 44 seats in the Lok Sabha. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Rajmohan Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, finished second. The BJP’s Mahesh Giri, a Maharashtra-born former India Against Corruption activist, won this seat in 2014, riding on the Modi wave.
In 2019, all three parties changed their candidates but East Delhi went with the national mood to vote cricketer-turned-politician Gautam Gambhir, the BJP nominee, to victory. The Congress and the AAP swapped positions compared to 2014.
