In the recently concluded MP state elections, a close contest was observed between BJP and Congress. Although theCongress managed to edge past BJP in the total number of seat wins, there are 7seats in which BJP has won by a margin less than 1,000 votes.
In the nail-biting 230 seat assembly elections, the Congress managed to win 114 seats, two short of a majority while the BJP finished at 109 seats, seven short of a majority. The two parties locked their horns in one of the historic assembly elections of the country.
The seven seats where the Congress candidates came second after their BJP rivals with a narrow margin ranging from some hundred to thousand votes included Gwalior South, Suwasra in Mandsour district, Jabalpur North, Damoh in Damoh district, Rajnagar in Chhatarpur district, Biaora in Rajgarh district and Rajpur in Barwani district.
Gwalior South witnessed the toughest battle in the state as it generated a close result in which the Congress’ Praveen Pathak defeated BJP’s Narayan Singh Kushwah by a slim margin of 121 votes.
Suwasra, another constituency in Madhya Pradesh, was held as a witness to a fierce contest that favoured Congress’ Dand Singh, defeating the BJP’s Radheshyam Patidar by a margin of 350 votes.
The fidgety contest in Jabalpur North saw Congress candidate Vinay Saxena defeating BJP’s Sharad Jain by some votes. The same seat was won by Jain with a margin of 33,563 votes.
The Rajnagar seat is deemed as a witness of the Congress’ Vikram Singh, alias Nati Raja, defeating the BJP’s Arvind Pateriya by a margin of 732 seats. Former Congress leader Satyabrata Chaturvedi’s son Nitin, renowned as ‘Bunty Bhaiya’ contested from the seat on a Samajwadi Party ticket and emerged fourth overall.
Jayant Malaiya, a BJP heavy weight and former Minister in the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government, was defeated by Rahul Singh of Congress by 798 votes.
The Biaora seat also experienced a high-tension battle between the Congress and the BJP in which Govardhan Dangi of Congress had the last laugh, defeating the BJP’s Narayan Singh Panwar by 826 votes.
Rajnagar was another seat which witnessed a close contest between the two parties. Bala Bacchan, a former Congress national Secretary, defeated BJP’s Anter Singh Patel by 932 votes. Interestingly, NOTA butchered the vote share for the BJP candidates in all the seven seats.
Biora and Damoh are the two seats where the NOTA count has touched 1481 and 1299 respectively. The NOTA count was 1,550 in Gwalior South, 1,209 in Jabalpur North, 2,485 in Rajnagar, 2,486 Rajpur and2,976 in Suwasra.
The upper castes in MP were infuriated with the strategy of BJP following their amendment of the SC/ST Act. This strategic move initiated by the central leadership of BJP seemed to have a boomerang effect on the party itself. Although they managed to counter the Congress propaganda in alleging them as an anti-Dalit organisation, they managed to aggravate the emotions of the upper castes.
Among the five states where assembly pollswere conducted, MP remained in the spotlight till the conclusion of vote counting since there was a skittish rivalry going on between the ruling BJP andcontenders with the leads rigorously shifting from one to another.