BJP lost 17 seats in Haryana by a narrow margin

NEW DELHI: The BJP's triumph in Haryana cannot just be assessed through the number of seats the party won but also by the margins of victory in majority of the winning constituencies.
Constituency-wise results also show that the BJP, besides winning 47 seats, came at number two position in as many as 17 seats. The victory margins of rival parties on four of these 17 seats were less than 2,000 votes with one constituency (Ratia SC) even reporting the margin to be as low as 453 votes.
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Analysis of the results of all 90 seats of the state shows the BJP has won 32 of its 47 seats with a victory margin of over 10,000 votes or more. In fact, 28 seats of these 32 seats show a winning margin of 10% or more – which is certainly a kind of achievement for the party since it was contesting all the seats in the state for the first time. Even more impressive was the fact that most of the constituencies had seen four-cornered contests with INLD, Congress and Haryana Janhit Congress (BL).
Even the overall vote share of the party has jumped substantially this year as compared to 2009 Assembly polls when it had won only four seats. The BJP has vote share of 33.2% this time as compared to only 9.04% five years ago.
Gurgaon, primarily having urban voters, reported the highest winning margin (84,095) for the BJP where the party’s candidate Umesh Aggarwal defeated his Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) rival Gopi Chand Gahlot.
The other constituencies where the BJP romped home with handsome margins include Karnal (63,773), Panipat City (53,721), Ballabhgarh (53,098), Ateli (48,601), Faridabad (44,781), Panchkula (44,602), Pataudi SC (38,963) and Panipat Rural (36,132).
The party has, however, also its share of victories with low margin of less than 1%. Two of its candidates, Krishan Kumar and Abhe Singh won their Shahbad (SC) and Nangal Chaudhry assembly seats, respectively, by a margin of less than 1,000 votes. While Krishan Kumar defeated his INLD rival by a margin of 562 votes, Abhe Singh defeated the INLD’s Manju by a margin of 981 votes.
Interestingly, the lowest winning margin in this election was reported by Congress candidate and sitting MLA Jai Tirath of Rai constituency where he defeated his INLD rival Inderjeet by a margin of only three votes. Tirath polled 36,703 votes as against Inderjeet’s 36,700.
As far as overall vote shares of other parties are concerned, the INLD came at number two position with 24.1% of votes followed by Congress (20.6%). Interestingly, independent candidates had more than 10% of vote share in the election.
The INLD won 19 seats whereas the Congress got 15. Five seats were won by independent candidates, two by Haryana Janhit Congress (BL) and one each went to BSP and Shiromani Akali Dal.