Assembly Election 2018: From margin of 71,000 to mere 121, & near equal vote, Madhya Pradesh sees it all

Close finishes, brute victories and a near identical vote share of the two main opponents — Congress and BJP — the Madhya Pradesh election saw it all. The election also saw four key ministers of the outgoing BJP government suffering defeat.

The closest fight in the state was seen in Gwalior South seat where the Congress' Praveen Pathak won against Narayan Singh Kuswah with a paltry margin of 121 votes. In Suwasra, Mandsaur district, Hardeep Singh Dang of Congress won with a margin of 350 votes against BJP's Radheshyam Patidar. The third lowest margin of victory was recorded in the Bina seat where BJP's Mahesh Rai won with 632 more votes than Shashi Kathoria of the Congress.

The highest margin in the state was recorded in Indore-2 seat where BJP's Ramesh Mendola defeated Mohan Singh Sengar by 71,011 votes. The Chitrangi seat saw the second highest margin of 59,248 votes where BJP's Amar Singh defeated Saraswati Singh of the Congress. Shivraj Singh Chouhan too won with a handsome margin of 58,999 votes against Arun Yadav of Congress from Budhni seat.

The smallest of differences between the vote-share of the two parties was also a key factor for making the election a nail-biting humdinger contest. BJP's vote share was 41% and Congress' vote share was 40.9%. The Congress managed to increase its vote share by 4.11% and the BJP saw a 4.19% drop in its vote share. The Bahujan Samaj Party, which has extended support to Congress to help it cross the half-way mark of 116 seats saw a reduction of 1.42% in its vote share.

Among the ministers, women and child development minister Archana Chitnis, minister of higher education Jaibhan Pawaiya, Finance Minister Jayant Malaiya and revenue minister Umashankar Gupta all lost whereas home minister Bhupendra Singh and speaker Sitasharan Sharma won.