It was a mixed day for India's sporting legends who tried their luck in the general elections. Cricket stars Kirti Azad and Yusuf Pathan proved to be giant slayers, but football legend Prasun Banerjee hung on to his political territory.
Legendary former hockey captain Dilip Tirkey (BJD) and Para-athlete Devendra Jhajhariya (BJP), who owns two gold medals from the Paralympics in the javelin throw, both admitted loss in their respective seats of Churu (Rajasthan) and Sundargarh (Odisha).
However, Azad and Yusuf—who were competing on behalf of the Trinamool Congress (TMC)—established their dominance in the political arena by securing unexpected victories.
Banerjee, a former football captain, was another prominent athlete running on a TMC ticket. He won by 1.69 lakh votes from Howrah (West Bengal). He would be serving his third straight term in the Lok Sabha as the constituency's representative.
Playing for the 1983 World Cup-winning 'Kapil's Devils,' Azad made a formidable political return by defeating BJP heavyweight Dilip Ghosh from the West Bengal constituency of Bardhaman-Durgapur.
By a margin of 1,37,981 votes, he beat Ghosh, the former state leader of the BJP who had previously held the Midnapore constituency.
Ghosh was a vociferous opponent of Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress administration in the state and held the position of national vice-president of the BJP from 2021 to 2023, therefore the news came as a big shock to the party.
Originally from Gujarat, Yusuf also created a huge stir when he defeated Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, the current leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha and five-time Congress MP, by a margin of more than 85,000 votes in the Bahrampur district in West Bengal.
Azad, the son of the late Bhagwat Jha Azad, the chief minister of Bihar, represented India in seven Test matches and twenty-five One-Day Internationals from 1980 to 1986. In Indian politics, Azad is no newbie. In 1999, he was elected to the Bihar town of Darbhanga for the first time. On a BJP ticket, he was elected to the Lok Sabha twice in a row from Darbhanga in 2009 and 2014.
After Azad attacked the late Arun Jaitley, the finance minister at the time, for suspected corruption in the Delhi & District Cricket Association (DDCA), the BJP banned Azad in 2015.
Before joining the Trinamool Congress in 2021, he had an unsuccessful Lok Sabha campaign from Dhanbad on a Congress ticket in 2019.
However, it was Yusuf's first time participating in politics. Yusuf played for India when they won the first-ever T20 World Cup in 2007 in South Africa and again when they won the 2011 ODI World Cup at home.
The Congressman Rahul Kaswan from Rajasthan's Churu seat defeated Jhajharia, who was also a first-time candidate, by a margin of 72,737 votes.
In addition to facing defeat in his own Sundargarh constituency against BJP heavyweight and former Union minister Jual Oram, Tirkey—who is presently the chairman of Hockey India—also experienced defeat.
| Name of Representative | Name of Party | Opposition | Number of Votes Margin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yusuf Pathan | TMC | Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury | 70,000+ |
| Kirti Azad | TMC | Dilip Ghosh | 1,37,981 |
| Banerjee | TMC | Dr. Rathin Chakravarty (BJP) | 1,69,000 |
Also Read: 5 candidates break the record for the highest victory margin
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Akanksha Sinha
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