0.9% vote share leads to BJP’s ousting in Himachal Pradesh

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The Bharatiya Janata Party was ousted by the Indian National Congress in Himachal Pradesh by bagging merely 37,974 (0.9 percent) more votes.

The Congress gained power by winning 40 out of the 68 assembly seats, while the BJP secured only 25. As per the Election Commission of India’s official data, the BJP lost by a margin of less than 2,000 votes in 15 assembly constituencies.

Congress secured 43.9 percent votes and BJP got 43 percent in the 68-member House in the hill state, which has kept up the tradition of not repeating the incumbent regime since 1985.

In the Bhoranj assembly seat, Congress party’s Suresh Kumar beat BJP's Anil Dhiman by 60 votes, the lowest victory margin. Conversely, in Sri Naina Deviji, BJP's Randhir Sharma beat Congress’ Ram Lal Thakur by 171 votes.

In the Shillai and Rampur assembly constituencies, the Congress candidate won over their BJP rivals by 382 and 567 votes, respectively.

Meanwhile, the outgoing Chief Minister, BJP's Jai Ram Thakur won his Seraj seat with a margin of 38,183 votes. The two probable CM candidates from Congress -- Sukhvinder Singh defeated BJP's Vijay Kumar by 3,363 votes from Nadaun and Mukesh Agnihotri beat BJP's Ram Kumar by 9148 votes in Haroli.

While addressing party workers at the BJP headquarters in New Delhi on December 8, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, “The vote share in Himachal Pradesh showed that people tried to make the BJP victorious. We will continue to work for the state’s development and ensure support always.”

Never in Himachal’s electoral history had the vote share difference between the winner and the loser been less than one percent, he added.

Arvind Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) failed to open its account in the hill state and the CPI-M’s incumbent MLA from Theog also lost. The ECI’s data shows AAP managed to get only 1.10 percent vote share, the CPI-M 0.66 percent.