In the 2018 assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, the Congress emerged as the single largest party that won 114 seats – just five more than the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that won 109 assemblies. In at least seven seats, the winning margin of the grand old party was less than 1,000, data analysed by News18 shows. In two of these seats, the margin was less than 350.
The BJP, on the other hand, was the second largest party with 109 seats, including three seats where the margin was below 1,000, data from the Election Commission of India shows.
On Friday, the 230-member Madhya Pradesh assembly is again going for polls. Here’s an analysis of what happened in 2018. In at least 10 seats, the winning margin was less than 1,000 – three in favour of the BJP and seven where the Congress won the polls.
In the last elections, Gwalior South assembly saw the narrowest winning margin, when the Congress’s Praveen Pathak defeated the BJP’s Narayan Singh Kushwah with just 121 votes. Pathak bagged 56,369 votes, while Kushwah got 56,248 votes. The constituency was formed in 2008 and since then Kushwah has been elected until 2018. In 2013, he won the seat with a margin of 16,267 votes and in 2008 with a margin of 7,745 votes.
The second lowest margin in the 2018 election was reported from Suwasra, where then Congress leader Hardeep Singh Dang won with a margin of just 350 votes. Dang later switched to the BJP in 2020. Dang was also elected from the seat in 2013.
At 511, Jaora reported the third lowest margin, but it was in the favour of the BJP. Rajendra Pandey of the BJP snatched the seat from Congress in 2013 and maintained his hold even in 2018 as he bagged 511 more votes than Congress’s K K Singh Kalukheda.
The next was Jabalpur North, where Congress leader Vinay Saxena received 578 more votes than the BJP’s Sharad Jain. The BJP had been holding the seat since 2008, when it was formed and Jain was the ruling candidate for two terms. In 2018, Jain got 49,467 against Saxena’s 50,045 votes.
The BJP got lucky in Bina where party’s Mahesh Rai won the elections with 632 more votes. Shashi Kathoria of the Congress got 57,469 votes, while Rai received 57,929 votes. In Kolaras, the BJP won with a margin of 720 votes.
There were four more seats where the winning margin was below 1,000 and all bagged by the Congress. These were Rajnagar (732); Damoh (798); Biaora (826) and Rajpur (932).
INDORE-2 GAVE MANDATE WITH HIGHEST MARGIN
The BJP’s Ramesh Mendola won the Indore-2 assembly with the highest margin of 71,011, as he bagged 1,38,794, nearly 64% of the total votes. The assembly has been the BJP’s stronghold since 1993. Party’s Kailash Vijayvargiya has been elected from the seat in 1993, 1998 and 2003. Post 2008, Mendola won from the seat.
Outgoing Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan is among the candidates who won the elections with the highest margin – 58,999 votes.
HOW CLOSE WAS THE FIGHT
In at least 45 seats, the winning margin was less than 5,000 – including the 10 listed above. Of these, the Congress won 19 seats and the BJP bagged 24 seats. One of the seats was secured by an independent candidate and another by the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).
The BSP’s Rambai Govind Singh won Pathariya with a margin of 2,205 votes, while Independent candidate Pradeep Amratlal Jaiswal won the Waraseoni by a margin of 3,862 votes.
Further, there were 37 seats where the margin was less than 4,000 votes – 16 won by the Congress and 19 by BJP and in 30 seats the margin was less than 3,000 votes with the Congress winning 15 of these. In as many as 18 seats, including 10 won by the Congress, where the winning margin was below 2,000 votes.
After voting on Friday, counting of the votes for the current elections will be done on December 3.
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