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If only the Congress, which gave the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) a tough fight in the recent Gujarat Assembly elections, had joined hands with Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), the election results would have been very different.
However, that did not happen, and the outcome is that the Congress is in the opposition and the BJP is going to form the government in the state.
A closer look at the results reveals that BSP and NCP candidates messed up the game for the Congress on a number of seats, letting the BJP win.
The NCP was a part of the Manmohan Singh government at the Centre while the BSP lent outside support. Both parties oppose BJP everywhere, but in Gujarat they ended up eating into Congress votes. The NCP won just one seat and the BSP got nothing.
The Congress lost the Botad seat in Saurashtra by just 906 votes, but if it had the BSP and the NCP’s support, it would have won this seat with over a thousand votes.
In Dholka city of the Ahmedabad district, the Congress lost the election by just 327 votes. If BSP and NCP candidates hadn’t been contesting from the same seat, the Congress could have won it by around 4,000 votes.
On this seat, the Congress lost by 2,711 votes, but with BSP-NCP support it could have won by a thousand votes.
The party missed Panchmahal’s Godhra seat by a mere 258 votes. It could have easily won with nearly a thousand votes with the BSP’s and NCP’s support.
This seat was lost by 1,712 votes, but with a BSP-NCP alliance, the Congress could have won from here.
Senior Congress leader Arjun Modhwadia lost the Porbandar seat to BJP's Babu Bokhiria, who got 72,430 votes. The Congress came in second with 70,575 votes. The BSP candidate contesting from this seat got 4,337 votes. If the BSP had supported the Congress, Modhwadia could have won the election by about 2,500 votes.
BJP’s Gajendra Singh Parmar won from this seat with 83,482 votes. The Congress candidate came in second with 80,931 votes. Meanwhile the the NCP candidate got 3,718 votes and the BSP got 1,079.
Again the Congress could easily have won the seat with the support of the other two parties.
The BJP won the Rajkot Rural Assembly seat with 92,114 votes, while the Congress finished second with 89,935. On the same seat, the BSP got 3,323 votes and the NCP got 880.
The BJP won the Umreth Assembly seat in Anand district after getting 68,326 votes. The Congress followed with 66,443 votes while the NCP got 35,051. The Congress could have won this seat by a significant margin with NCP support.
The Vijapur seat in Mehsana district was won by the BJP after it received 72,326 votes. The Congress came in second with 71,162, while the BSP got 621 and the NCP 1,037.
The election numbers for Gujarat are quite clear; the Grand Old Party of India, trying to become the Grand Old Young Party of India, missed its chance in the state.
(This article was originally published in Quint Hindi.)
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Published: 20 Dec 2017,02:13 PM IST