I.S. Saluja

NEW DELHI / NEW YORK (TIP): The Congress on Thursday, December 8,  wrested Himachal Pradesh from the BJP winning 40 seats in the 68-member Assembly in the hill state which maintained its tradition of not voting any incumbent government to power since 1985. The victory comes as a boost to the Congress which has been witnessing slide down in its popularity across the nation, in view of the  election cycle in nine states in 2023 which include the Hindi heartland states of Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh which together send 65 MPs to the Lok Sabha. According to the results declared by the Election Commission, the BJP won 25 seats, while eight state ministers, including Suresh Bhardwaj, Ram Lal Markanda and Surveen Chaudhary lost. The Independents won from three constituencies and the Aam Aadmi Party, which had contested from 67 seats, failed to open its account. The BJP and the Congress contested on all 68 constituencies. BJP created history in Gujarat by winning 156 seats out of 182, the highest ever since the inception of the state. Congress finished a poor second with 17 seats.

AAP’s dream of doing a Punjab in Gujarat was shattered with the party getting only 5 seats. It is interesting to study the pattern of  strength the BJP gained in Gujarat. The party won 9 seats in 1980; 11 in 1985; 67 in 1990; 121 in 1995,  117 in 1998, 127 seats in 2002 followed by 117, 115 and 77 in 2007, 2012 and 2017 respectively. The present historic mandate -156 seats out of 182, is the best ever in the state. AAP created history by ousting the well-entrenched BJP in  Municipal Corporation of Delhi elections. AAP won 134 seats out of a total of 250 wards, while the BJP got 104, and the Congress came a distant third with just nine.  AAP   wrested 77 seats from the BJP. In  By polls, The Samajwadi Party  scored a major victory when it retained the Mainpuri Lok Sabha seat and wrested the Khatauli Assembly seat from the BJP.

SP candidate Dimple Yadav won the Mainpuri seat with a margin of 2.9 lakh votes, defeating Raghuraj Shakya of the BJP. The BJP, on the other hand, wrested the Rampur seat from the SP, and BJP’s Akash Saxena won it with a margin of 31,158 defeating Asim Raza of SP.BJP wrested the Kurhani Assembly seat in Bihar, dealing a blow to the Nitish Kumar-led ruling grand alliance in the state. BJP candidate Kedar Prasad Gupta defeated Manoj Singh Kushwaha of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) by 3,645 votes.