In terms of winning percentage registered by the stars from the glamour world, the TMC fared better than the BJP with 80 per cent of those it fielded winning at the hustings. The BJP had a strike rate of over 70 per cent while the Congress, the SP and the JD (S) saw 100 per cent losses.
Of the five filmstars the TMC fielded, only one Moon Moon Sen lost. Sen, a sitting MP from Bankura, was fielded in Asansol against BJP’s sitting MP and Union Minister Babul Supriyo, who was a Bollywood singer. Supriyo defeated Sen by around 2 lakh votes in a contest whose campaign was marred by violence.
The four other stars from the TMC namely Mimi Chakraborty, Nusrat Jahan, Deepak Adhikary alias Dev and Satabadi Roy won from their respective seats.
Actor Mimi Chakraborty opened her political account on a Trinamool Congress ticket after winning by a margin of nearly 2.9 lakh votes from the prestigious Jadavpur Lok Sabha seat. It was in this seat that party chief Mamata Banerjee had trounced CPI(M) veteran and noted lawyer Somnath Chatterjee in 1984.
Pitted against BJP general secretary Sayantan Basu, another actor-turned-politician Nusrat Jahan won Basirhat by over 3.5 lakh votes. For her part, Satabdi Roy retained Birbhum seat by a margin of 88924 votes while Deepak Adhikary alias Dev won Ghatal seat by a margin of over one lakh.
As for the BJP, of the nine stars it fielded, seven won with Jaya Prada and Dinesh Lal Yadav ‘Nirhaua’ being the only two losers. Dinesh Lal Yadav, alias Nirhaua was defeated by SP chief Akhilesh Yadav from Azamgarh seat while Jaya Prada lost to Azam Khan from Rampur seat.
Bollywood actor Sunny Deol, Hema Malini, Bhojpuri superstar Ravi Kishan and Manoj Tiwari and Sufi singer Hans Raj Hans won from the BJP on the Modi magic while south actor Sumlatha Ambareesh who was backed by the BJP also won her seat against Nikhil Swamy of the JD (S).
Making his political debut from BJP, actor Sunny Deol was pitted against the sitting MP Sunil Jakhar of the Congress from Gurdaspur seat. Deol won the Gurdaspur constituency by 82,459 votes.
Ravi Kishan, an established actor in both Bollywood and Bhojpuri film industry, faced off against Samajwadi Party’s Rambhual Nishad and managed to defend UP CM Yogi Adityanath ‘s home turf. He won the election by a margin of over three lakh votes.
Hema Malini, also known as ‘Dream Girl’, retained her Mathura seat, defeating RLD candidate Kunwar Narendra Singh by a margin of over three lakh votes while actor-turned-politician Kirron Kher won a second term from Chandigarh defeating her nearest rival Pawan Kumar Bansal of Congress by over 40,000 votes.
Locket Chatterjee, opened the BJP account from Hooghly by defeating the sitting TMC MP Ratna De Nag while in Delhi, another Bhojpuri superstar and BJP’s State unit chief Manoj Tiwari defeated three-time former Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit by a margin of over 3.5 lakh votes.
All three — Urmila Matondkar, Shatrughan Sinha and Raj Babbar — from the glitzy world that the Congress fielded, lost. So did Poonam Sinha from SP and Nikhil Kumar Swamy from JD(S).
Actor-turned-politician and former BJP rebel Shatrughan Sinha, who defected to Congress, lost to Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad by over 2.5 lakh votes. Urmila lost Mumbai North parliamentary seat to BJP candidate Gopal Shetty by a huge margin of more than 4.5 lakh votes while Raj babbar lost Fatehpur Sikri seat by a margin of five lakh votes to BJP’s Rajkumar Chahar.
Actor Prakash Raj contested from the Bangalore Central constituency as an Independent and even forfeited his deposit. BJP candidate P C Mohan defeated Congress’s Rizwan Arshad by more than 3.5 lakh votes.
