Amethi Lok Sabha result: The early trends of vote counting for the Amethi Lok Sabha seat in Uttar Pradesh showed the BJP's Smriti Irani leading against the Congress's Kishori Lal Sharma. Amethi is a prestige seat for both the Congress and the BJP.
The Amethi Lok Sabha seat is among the most talked-about constituencies this polls season. The former Congress bastion became a BJP fort in 2019 when Smriti Irani unseated Rahul Gandhi by a margin of over 55,000 votes.
This was a major loss of face for the Congress, which it cannot experience again. This was only the third time that a "Gandhi" had lost the seat. The previous two occasions were when Sanjay Gandhi lost to the Janata Party's Ravindra Pratap Singh in 1977. The other occasion was when Maneka Gandhi lost to Rahul's father and her brother-in-law Rajiv Gandhi in the 1984 elections.
This year, the Congress fielded Gandhi family loyalist KL Sharma against Union Minister for Minority Affairs Smriti Irani. Kishori Lal Sharma, originally from Ludhiana in Punjab, was instrumental in orchestrating Sonia Gandhi's first electoral win in 1999 in Amethi. His political journey in Amethi began in 1983 when he arrived as a Congress activist.
Over the years, he formed a close association with the late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and chose to stay in Amethi, dedicating his efforts to the Congress party. Following Rajiv Gandhi's assassination in 1991, Sharma's bond with the Gandhi family strengthened, leading him to actively support Congress's campaigns in Amethi and beyond.
When Sonia Gandhi switched her constituency to Raebareli, KL Sharma followed, becoming her Man Friday.
Amethi went to polls on May 20 during the fifth phase of the Lok Sabha elections and recorded a turnout of 54.34%.