Five candidates crush record for highest Lok Sabha polls victory margin, Indore's Lalwani tops list
New Delhi (PTI): At least five candidates, including four from the BJP, crushed the previous record for the highest victory margin in the Lok Sabha elections, with Indore's incumbent MP Shankar Lalwani of the BJP topping the list with a winning margin of 11.72 lakh votes.
The Congress' Rakibul Hussain scored the second-highest victory margin with 10.12 lakh from Dhubri in Assam.
Former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan won from Vidisha by 8.21 lakh votes -- the third highest margin -- followed by the BJP's CR Patil, who recorded a margin of 7.73 lakh from Navsari in Gujarat.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah won from Gandhinagar by a margin of over 7.44 lakh votes.
The previous record for the highest winning margin was held by Pritam Munde, also from the BJP, who had won a bypoll in October 2014 from Beed in Maharashtra by more than 6.96 lakh votes.
Patil, a three-term MP from Navsari, held the record for the second-highest margin after he won by 6.89 lakh votes in 2019.
He has now broken his own record.
Union Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia won from Guna in Madhya Pradesh by more than 5.40 lakh votes.
Among other candidates who won by a margin of over 5 lakh votes are the BJP's Gujarat candidates Rajpalsingh Jadav from Panchmahal (5.09 lakh) and Hemang Joshi from Vadodara (5.82 lakh), its Bhopal nominee Alok Sharma (5.01 lakh) and Sudheer Gupta from Mandsour (over 5 lakh).
The BJP's Mahesh Sharma won from Uttar Pradesh's Gautam Buddha Nagar by 5.59 lakh votes while the saffron party's candidate from Raipur in Chattisgarh Brijmohan Agarwal secured a margin of 5.75 lakh.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi won by more than 1.52 lakh votes from Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi bettered Sonia Gandhi's 2019 victory margin from Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh, winning by more than 3.90 lakh votes.
Gandhi also won from Wayanad in Kerala by a margin of more than 3.64 lakh votes.
Former Tripura chief minister Biplab Kumar Deb of the BJP won from Tripura West by a margin of more than 6 lakh votes while Kriti Dev Debbarman of the saffron party won the Tripura East constituency by more than 4.86 lakh votes.
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Cong takes swipe at PM over India not being part of US-led 'Pax Silica' grouping
New Delh (PTI) The Congress on Saturday said it is perhaps not very surprising that India is not part of a US-led strategic initiative to build a secure silicon supply chain, given the "sharp downturn" in the Trump-Modi ties, and asserted that it would have been to "our advantage if we had been part of this group".
Congress general secretary in charge of communications Jairam Ramesh took a swipe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying the news of India not being part of the group comes after the PM had enthusiastically posted on social media about a telephone call with his "once-upon-a-time good friend and a recipient of many hugs in Ahmedabad, Houston, and Washington DC".
In a lengthy post on X, Ramesh said, "According to some news reports, the US has excluded India from a nine-nation initiative it has launched to reduce Chinese control on high-tech supply chains. The agreement is called Pax Silica, clearly as a counter to Pax Sinica. The nations included (for the moment at least) are the US, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Australia."
"Given the sharp downturn in the Trump-Modi ties since May 10th, 2025, it is perhaps not very surprising that India has not been included. Undoubtedly, it would have been to our advantage if we had been part of this group."
"This news comes a day after the PM had enthusiastically posted on his telephone call with his once-upon-a-time good friend and a recipient of many hugs in Ahmedabad, Houston, and Washington DC," the Congress leader asserted.
The new US-led strategic initiative, rooted in deep cooperation with trusted allies, has been launched to build a secure and innovation-driven silicon supply chain.
According to the US State Department, the initiative called 'Pax Silica' aims to reduce coercive dependencies, protect the materials and capabilities foundational to artificial intelligence (AI), and ensure aligned nations can develop and deploy transformative technologies at scale.
The initiative includes Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Australia. With the exception of India, all other QUAD countries -- Japan, Australia and the US -- are part of the new initiative.
New Delhi will host the India-AI Impact Summit 2026 on February 19-20, focusing on the principles of 'People, Planet, and Progress'. The summit, announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the France AI Action Summit, will be the first-ever global AI summit hosted in the Global South.
Prime Minister Modi and US President Trump on Thursday discussed ways to sustain momentum in the bilateral economic partnership in a phone conversation amid signs of the two sides inching closer to firming up a much-awaited trade deal.
The phone call between the two leaders came on a day Indian and American negotiators concluded two-day talks on the proposed bilateral trade agreement that is expected to provide relief to India from the Trump administration's whopping 50 per cent tariffs on Indian goods.
In a social media post, Modi had described the conversation as "warm and engaging".
"We reviewed the progress in our bilateral relations and discussed regional and international developments. India and the US will continue to work together for global peace, stability and prosperity," Modi had said without making any reference to trade ties.
