Defeated by Vajpayee in 2004, SP leader remembers the dignified contest

At the height of the 'India Shining' campaign by the then ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the Centre and in the run-up to the 2004 Lok Sabha election, incumbent Prime Minister and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) mascot Atal Bihari Vajpayee was vying for his fifth straight parliamentary victory from Lucknow.

Pitted against him was Samajwadi Party (SP) candidate and an established city-based gynaecologist Dr Madhu Gupta. Gupta had in the past contested the 2000 Lucknow mayoral election, which was later won by BJP nominee Dr S C Rai, a veteran medical practitioner himself.

As was expected, Vajpayee went on to score a massive win over Gupta by a victory margin of over 218,000 votes, polling over 55 per cent votes vis-à-vis 18 per cent by the SP candidate. While he polled 324,714 votes, Gupta garnered 106,339.

In 2004, Lucknow had witnessed a low polling of 35 per cent, with roughly 587,000 voters out of an electorate of 1.6 million deciding to exercise their franchise.