Lucknow: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has surpassed Sonia Gandhi's 2019 victory margin from the Rae Bareli constituency and is now leading by 2,27,535 votes against his nearest rival Dinesh Pratap Singh of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), news agency PTI reported as the counting of votes for the Lok Sabha Elections got underway on Tuesday.

Rahul Gandhi, who contested from Rae Bareli seat for the first time, was ahead of the BJP candidate since the beginning of the counting.

Singh is also a minister in the Uttar Pradesh cabinet led by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.

In 2019, former Congress president Sonia Gandhi had won the seat by a margin 1,67,178 votes against Dinesh Pratap Singh.

Rahul represented the Amethi Lok Sabha seat from 2004 to 2019.

In the 2019 parliamentary election, he lost the seat to the BJP's star campaigner Smriti Irani but was elected to the Lok Sabha from Kerala's Wayanad.