BJP proved lucky for retired bureaucrats and officers from the security forces with six out of seven such candidates fighting on the party ticket managing a comfortable win at the hustings.
The saffron party had fielded seven retired government personnel out of a total of 18 such contestants nominated by different political parties including JD(U) and AAP.
Though the retired officials, barring one in Barrackpore, from the saffron party seemed to have benefited by the 'Modi wave', their counterparts contesting from other parties were less fortunate with rest of 12 candidates losing the electoral battle. BJP nominee from Barrackpore seat, retired IPS officer R K Handa, lost.
Interestingly, the maximum number of retired bureaucrats who lost were from the Aam Aadmi Party and included among others AAP chief and former IRS officer Arvind Kejriwal and Ajit Joy, an ex-IPS officer, who was given the ticket from Thiruvananthapuram against Congress' Shashi Tharoor. Kejriwal was pitted against Narendra Modi in Varanasi.
The high-profile BJP winners include former Home Secretary R K Singh, ex-Army Chief Gen V K Singh, former Mumbai Police Commissioner Satyapal Singh and ex-Rajasthan DGP H C Meena.
While R K Singh, a 1975-batch retired IAS Bihar cadre officer, won by 1.35 lakh votes from Arrah constituency in Bihar defeating RJD's candidate Sribhagwan Singh Kushwaha, the former Army Chief won from Uttar Pradesh's Ghaziabad seat by a thumping majority of 5.67 lakh votes, defeating Congress candidate Raj Babbar.
Meena, a 1976-batch retired IPS officer, won by a margin of over 45,000 votes from Dausa in Rajasthan. He defeated his brother and senior Congress minister Namo Narain Meena.
In Uttar Pradesh, former Mumbai top cop Singh won by over 2 lakh votes from the Baghpat seat, defeating sitting MP and Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) chief Ajit Singh.
