Meet 10 first-time MPs who symbolise hope

The INDIA bloc’s significant gains in the 2024 election results declared on Tuesday pave the way for the entry of new set of faces into Parliament. The reduced strength of the Bharatiya Janata Party will also result in a more vocal Opposition in the Lok Sabha.

The BJP won 240 seats, well short of the majority mark of 272 – a feat that it had achieved on its own in the 2014 and 2019 general elections. The INDIA bloc secured 233 seats.

While Narendra Modi is most likely to return as prime minister for a third straight term, experts say that Modi having to run a coalition government could mean a balanced polity that “allows the possibility of institutional regeneration”.

Here are 10 first-time MPs who symbolise what former US president Barack Obama once described as “the audacity of hope”.

Sanjna Jatav

Sanjna Jatav of the Congress will be among four MPs in the new Parliament who are only 25 years old. Jatav, a law graduate and a former zilla parishad member from Alwar district, was elected from Rajasthan’s Bharatpur Lok Sabha seat, which is reserved for Scheduled Castes.

She defeated Ramswaroop Koli of the Bharatiya Janata Party by 51,983 votes. Bharatpur is the home district of Rajasthan Chief Minister Bhajanlal Sharma of the BJP.

In the Rajasthan Assembly elections in December, Jatav had lost the Kathumar seat, in Alwar district, by just 409 votes. Six months later, Jatav danced to celebrate her election to Parliament. A video of her joy was shared widely online.

Chandrashekhar Azad

Activist-politician Chandrashekhar Azad was elected from the Nagina constituency in Uttar Pradesh, in a significant victory for Dalit representation.

Azad defeated Om Kumar of the BJP by more than 1.51 lakh votes. He did not join the Opposition’s INDIA bloc but instead contested on a ticket from his own outfit, the Aazad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram). Azad’s victory comes at a time when the Bahujan Samaj Party, which has long been at the forefront of Dalit representation in the legislature, failed to win a single seat.

Popularly known as “Ravan”, Azad shot to prominence in 2017 when his organisation, the Bhim Army, was blamed for violence in Uttar Pradesh’s Saharanpur.

In May that year, violence had broken out between the police and the Bhim Army and other Dalit organisations protesting against an alleged attack on Dalit homes by upper castes. Azad was accused of fomenting violence and jailed for more than a year under the draconian National Security Act.

After his release, he emerged as a prominent face of an assertive brand of Dalit politics as well as the countrywide protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act through late 2019 and early 2020.

Also read: Chandrashekhar’s azadi with swag: The fabulous mystique of the Bhim Army chief

Geniben Nagaji Thakor

A sitting legislator from Gujarat’s Vav assembly constituency, Geniben Nagaji Thakor’s victory paved way for the Congress to secure its first Lok Sabha seat in the state in a decade. Thakor broke into tears after defeating Rekhaben Hiteshbhai Chaudhari of the BJP by a margin of 30,406 votes.

In her victory, she breached the BJP’s citadel of Gujarat where the Hindutva party was aiming for a clean sweep of all 26 seats for a third consecutive Lok Sabha election.

In the run-up to the elections, Thakor told The Indian Express that she had faced pressure to cancel her nomination – a tactic the BJP successfully employed in at least two other seats in Gujarat, Surat and Gandhinagar. Thakor also had to crowdfund her campaign as the Congress ran out of funds, according to The Indian Express

Rajkumar Roat

Rajkumar Roat of the Congress-backed Bharat Adivasi Party emerged victorious in the Banswara Lok Sabha seat in Rajasthan, defeating two formidable rivals.

Roat defeated Mahendrajeet Singh Malviya of the BJP by a margin of more than 2.47 lakh votes. Malviya had defected from the Congress to the BJP in February. In the fray was also Congress’s Arvind Sita Damor, who refused to withdraw his nomination despite his party’s alliance with the Bharat Adivasi Party.

It was in Banswara that Modi had made one of the most vitriolic speeches of the election campaign, claiming that the Congress would redistribute private wealth of Hindus among “infiltrators” and “those who have more children” – a dog-whistle for Muslims.

Sasikanth Senthil

A former officer of the Indian Administrative Services, Sasikanth Senthil won the Tiruvallur Lok Sabha seat in Tamil Nadu by a massive margin of 5.72 lakh votes, defeating BJP candidate Pon Balaganapathy.

Senthil had resigned from the bureaucracy in 2019 and joined the Congress. In an interview with The News Minute in April, Senthil said that he had decided to quit the IAS to wage an “ideological war”. After he joined the Congress, he was made a party spokesperson and then put in charge of the Congress’s election “war room” in Tamil Nadu.

His victory is also being seen in contrast with the performance of BJP’s Tamil Nadu President K Annamalai, who had quit the Indian Police Services to join politics. Annamalai – the BJP’s best bet in Tamil Nadu – lost the Coimbatore seat by more than 1.18 lakh votes to Ganapathy Rajkumar P of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam.

Iqra Hasan

At 27 years of age, Iqra Hasan, will be another young face in Parliament. Hasan, who hails from a political family, won the Kairana Lok Sabha seat in Uttar Pradesh on a Samajwadi Party ticket. She defeated Pradeep Kumar of the BJP by more than 69,000 votes.

Hasan, who has a post-graduation degree in international politics and law from London’s SOAS University, contested amid the challenge of easing communal tension between the Jats and Muslims, simmering in the western Uttar Pradesh region since the Muzaffarnagar riots in 2013.

After declaring victory, Hasan said in an interview that her election was proof that the religious divide created by the BJP had been bridged.

Hasan is the daughter of two-time MP and two-time legislator, the late Munawwar Hasan. In 2009, Hasan’s mother, Tabassum Hasan, was elected as an MP from Kairana in 2009. Iqra Hasan’s brother, Nahid Hasan, is a three-time MLA from Kairana Assembly. He won the seat in 2022 while contesting from jail. The family has alleged that the BJP, in an instance of political vendetta, had jailed Nahid Hasan on charges of traffic violation and misbehaving with government officials.

Rajaram Singh

Rajaram Singh is one of the two MPs of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) to be elected to the Lok Sabha.

Singh was elected from the Karakat Lok Sabha seat in Bihar. He defeated Bhojpuri actor Pawan Singh, who contested as an Independent candidate, by a margin of over 1.05 lakh votes. Also in the fray was senior Bihari politician Upendra Kushwaha of the Rashtriya Lok Morcha, an ally of the BJP in Bihar.

Singh served as an MLA in the Bihar Assembly for two terms between 1995 and 2005. He is also the president of the Bihar and Jharkhand unit of the All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee, an umbrella body that claims to represent more than 250 farmers’ bodies.

Awadhesh Prasad

Awadhesh Prasad handed the BJP one of the most remarkable defeats in Uttar Pradesh in the Faizabad seat, which includes the Ayodhya Assembly segment. Prasad, a Dalit leader, defeated Lallu Singh of the BJP by a margin of over 54,000 votes despite the seat not being reserved for a Scheduled Caste candidate.

In April, Singh had triggered a row after he claimed that the BJP would need a two-thirds majority in the Lok Sabha to amend the Constitution.

The consecration of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya in January was one of BJP’s main campaign planks in this election. The temple is built on the site of the Babri mosque, which was demolished by Hindutva extremists in December 1992.

Amra Ram

Amra Ram, the Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s only MLA in the Rajasthan Assembly, will now represent the state’s Sikar constituency in the Lok Sabha. Ram, a veteran farmer leader in the Shekhawati region of Rajasthan, defeated BJP’s Sumedhanand Saraswati by nearly 73,000 votes.

In 2017, Ram had led a 13-day farmers’ protest in the Shekhawati region demanding better prices for crops, loan waivers and an easing of rules that governed the trade in farm animals. The Rajasthan government had given in to the demands of the protestors.

A four-term MLA from Rajasthan, Ram has served as the president of the All India Kisan Sabha and is currently the vice president of the farmers' body.

‘Engineer’ Rashid

Abdul Rashid Sheikh, who has been in jail since 2019, was elected from Baramulla Lok Sabha Seat in Jammu and Kashmir. Sheikh, popularly known as “Engineer” Rashid, defeated veteran politician Omar Abdullah of the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference by more than 2.04 lakh votes.

Sheikh has been in jail since 2019 in a terror funding case filed by the National Investigation Agency. He was arrested soon after the Centre scrapped the special status of Jammu and Kashmir and its statehood in August that year.

During his campaign, run by his supporters, a young voter in Kupwara had told Scroll: “Engineer Rashid represents thousands of Kashmiris who remain in jails, far off from their homes for no crime.”