What made Congress to enter MP: NOTA & Seats with margin of less than 1000 votes

The Madhya Pradesh Election 2018 was the most closely fought assembly polls in the country for the past recent time. The Congress got 114 seats with 40.9 percent vote share while the BJP won 109 seats with 41 percent vote share – the defeating party got 0.1 percentage point more than the winning one. The BJP got 1,56,42,980 votes compared to 1,55,95,153 votes polled by the Congress – a difference of only 47,817 votes. Interestingly, 1.4 percent or 5,42,295 voters opted for NOTA (None Of The Above) option. The BJP must be ruing NOTA option in the EVM in the aftermath.

Key points for the victory of Congress in MP

• 14 assembly seats in the Madhya Pradesh election were decided by a victory margin of fewer than 2,000 votes. 9 of them went in the favor of the Congress. 10 assembly seats were settled by a margin of fewer than 1,000 votes. 7 went to the Congress.
• Of these 14 seats, the Congress had won 3 seats in 2013 Madhya Pradesh assembly election. This time around, the Congress retained their seats while snatched six from the BJP in low margin contests.
• The victory margin was the lowest at Gwalior South, where Praveen Pathak of the Congress defeated sitting BJP MLA Narayan Singh Kushwah by 121 votes only. The Congress retained Suwasra seat in Mandsaur district of Madhya Pradesh by only 350 votes.
• Only 4 of the low margin (less than 2,000 votes) contests went in BJP’s favor in Madhya Pradesh election. On 3 of these seats, the victory margin for the BJP was less than 1,000 votes.

Seats which had low margin contests in Madhya Pradesh:

Gwalior South – Praveen Pathak of the Congress defeated sitting MLA Narayan Singh Kushwah by 121 votes.

Suwasra – Dang Hardeep Singh of the Congress defeated Radheshyam Nanalal Patidar of the BJP by 350 votes. The Congress retained this seat.

Jaora – Rajendra Pandey alias Raju Bhaiya of the BJP defeated KK Singh Kalukheda of the Congress by 511 votes. The BJP retained this seat.

Jabalpur North – Vinay Saxena of the Congress defeated sitting MLA Sharad Jain of the BJP by 578 votes.

Bina – Mahesh Rai of the BJP defeated Shashi Kathoria of the Congress by 632 votes. The BJP retained this seat.

Kolaras – Birendra Raghuvanshi of the BJP defeated Mahendra Ramsingh Yadav of Congress by 720 votes. The BJP snatched from the Congress, who had fielded son of the former MLA Ram Singh Yadav from this seat.

Rajnagar – Vikram Singh alias Nati Raja of the Congress defeated Arvind Pateriya of the BJP by 732 votes. The Congress retained this seat.

Damoh – Rahul Singh of the Congress defeated sitting MLA Jayant Malaiya of the BJP by 798 votes.

Biaora – Govardhan Dangi of the Congress defeated sitting BJP MLA Narayan Singh Panwar by 826 votes

Rajpur (ST) – Bala Bachchan of the Congress defeated Anter Singh Patel of BJP by 932 votes. The Congress retained this seat.

Deotalab – Girish Gautam of the BJP defeated Seema Jaiveer Singh Sengar of BSP by 1,080 votes. The BJP retained its seat here.

Indore-5 – Mahendra Hardia of the BJP defeated Satyanarayan Patel of the Congress by 1,133 votes. The BJP retained this seat.

Mandhata – Narayan Patel of the Congress defeated Narendra Singh Tomar of the BJP by 1,236 votes. The Congress snatched this seat from the BJP, which fielded Narendra Singh Tomar denying ticket to the sitting MLA Lokendra Singh Tomar.

Nepanagar – Sumitra Devi Kasdekar of the Congress defeated sitting MLA Manju Rajendra Dadu of the BJP by 1,264 votes. The Congress snatched this seat from the BJP. Manju Rajendra Dadu is the daughter of former BJP MLA Rajendra Shyamlal Dadu, who died in a road accident in 2016.

Source: India Today