SURPRISE ELEMENTS

Tireless party workers beavering away in the background, husbands/ wives of politicians or soldiers taking the political plunge, these new MPs were catapulted suddenly into prominence

- Ajay Sukumaran, Amitabh Srivastava, Prashant Srivastava, Dhaval S.Kulkarni, Rahul Noronha, Rohit Parihar and Arkamoy Datta Majumdar

WILDCARDS

VIVEK ‘BUNTY’ SAHU, 45 BJP Chhindwara, MP

Guts is something this 45-year-old seems to have in spades. A BCom dropout, Vivek Sahu, a.k.a. ‘Bunty’, had decided to beard the lion in his den in November 2023, taking on Congress heavyweight Kamal Nath in his bastion Chhindwara. That effort came to nought. As had the earlier one against Nath’s son, Nakul, in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. But persistence seems to have paid off as has the BJP’s faith in its Chhindwara district chief. Sahu achieved the impossible this election, defeating Nakul, the sitting MP, by over 110,000 votes and wresting a seat Congress had never lost in a general election since 1952.

BAPI HALDER, 37 TRINAMOOL CONGRESS | Mathurapur (SC), West Bengal

Riverine Mathurapur was the only political playground Halder had ever known, his pisciculturist family tracing its roots to these parts. His association with the TMC goes back to the days of its inception in 1998. He was elected to the local gram panchayat in 2013, became pradhan two years later and won the same seat in 2018. “Mamata Banerjee has proven that in our party if one fights for the people, works for them, even a grassroots worker like me can become an MP,” he said after his win over his nearest rival, the BJP’s Ashok Purkait.

CAPT VIRIATO FERNANDES, 55 | CONGRESS | South Goa