AHMEDABAD: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is creating history by winning 156 seats in Gujarat assembly elections, besides BJP winning 52.50% of the vote share. This has officially and never happened before in the history of Gujarat, where the percentage of people who voted for BJP was greater than 50%.
But in 37 seats in Gujarat itself, the BJP candidates received fewer votes than last year. Of these seats, the Congress party won 9 and AAP won two. Three were awarded to "others." The BJP has suffered defeats in 14 of these 37 seats in which the constituencies included Dhanera, Bayad, Khedbrahma, Vav, Lunawada, Khambhat, Kankeraj, Danilimda, Botad, Kutiana, Somnath, Jamalpur Khadia, Jamjodhpur, Vijapur, etc.
Out of these 37 seats, there are 19 seats in which Aam Aadmi Party candidates have lost their deposits. While in 11 seats BJP has faced defeat by more than ten thousand votes, the BJP has been defeated by 25,064 votes in the important Dhari assembly seat in Saurashtra.
BJP candidate on the Dhanera seat of North Gujarat got 60,357 votes, Congress got 38,260 votes, whereas Aam Aadmi Party got only 1130 votes and the victorious independent candidate got 96,053 votes.
Importantly, this time NOTA has played an important role in defeating BJP candidates on more than three seats. BJP candidate Ashwin Kotwal has lost 1664 votes from the Khedbrahma seat reserved for tribals in North Gujarat, where 7331 votes were cast in NOTA.
While BJP candidate Mansingh Parmar has lost on Somnath seat of Saurashtra by only 922 votes, 1530 votes have been cast in NOTA. Meanwhile, in North Gujarat, senior BJP leader Dilip Thakore has also faced defeat due to NOTA. Dilip Thakor has lost the Chansma seat by 1404 votes while 3811 votes have been cast in NOTA here.
Talking about this district, the highest number of NOTA votes was cast in Ahmedabad district with 49,568 votes while the lowest was cast in Dang district with 1910 votes.
According to political analysts, the polling this time was lower than in 2017, which has affected the votes received by the parties. Data somewhere shows that low voter turnout has benefited the BJP and the other parties have lost more.
A total of 3.13 crore voters voted in the Gujarat Legislative Assembly elections, out of which 1.67 crore voted for the BJP, which is an average of 52.50 percent.
For Graphic: BJP lost 14 assembly seats:
North Gujarat:
1. Dhanera,
2. Bayad,
3. KhedBrahma,
4. Vav,
5. Kankeraj,
6. Vijapur,
Central Gujarat:
1. Lunawada,
2. Khambhat,
3. Danilimda,
4. Jamalpur Khadia,
Saurashtra:
1. Botad,
2. Kutiana,
3. Somnath,
4. Jamjodhpur