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Ahmedabad, Dec 18: It has been an attritional campaign in Gujarat this year and the war of words got more acerbic as the campaign progressed. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which is all set to form a government in the state for the sixth time may be slightly shaken by the fact that these elections have been more uncomfortable than it may have expected. The BJP got 99 seats and the Congress+ got 80 seats. The final tally for the BJP is 16 seats less than its 115 in 2012 but at the end of the day —‘Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar’. Catch live updates on Gujarat Assembly election results 2017 here
In Gujarat’s 182-member- assembly, 92 seats are needed to form a government.
The Congress may take heart from the fact that it has made significant gains from the 61 seats it won in 2012 and run the BJP close. For Rahul Gandhi, who was recently elevated to the party’s top job, some may go as far to say — ‘Harkar Jeetney Wale Ko Baazigar Kehtey Hain’.
Here’s a look at how the various regions of the state voted. Remember these are leads at around noon – that’s four hours into the counting – and there may be slight variance in the final tally.
Saurashtra & Kutch
Most of the BJP’s losses came from Saurashtra and Kutch that voted in the first phase of the Gujarat elections on December 9. Of the 54 seats in the region, the BJP won 23 and Congress got 30. These losses are significant when compared to the 2012 elections where the BJP had won as many as 35 seats from the region and the Congress had bagged just 16.
In fact, the resentment against the BJP seems the most in Saurashtra’s agrarian belt where the party may manage to win only 9 of the 32 seats — half of what it had in 2012. The Congress gained significantly in this region.
North Gujarat
In North Gujarat, where the BJP was supposedly the weakest and the Hardik-Patel factor was supposed to hurt the party further, it seems then saffron brigade has given a good account of itself. In fact, of the 32 seats in the region, the BJP won 14 seats, one less than its 2012 tally of 15. However, the Congress won 17 seats and other won one seat.
The Congress almost outsourced its campaign to Hardik Patel – and while the 24-year-old impacted the BJP’s traditional vote bank, it just wasn’t enough.
Central Gujarat
Central Gujarat’s 61 seats are where the BJP has made good some of its losses in other regions. Here in 2012, the party had managed 37 seats. Perhaps the Prime Minister’s strident campaign, especially in the second phase of polling, helped consolidate the party’s position further. The BJP retained its 2012 figure of 37 seats and so did Congress, which stands at 22. The others won 2 seats.
South Gujarat
The Congress lost in South Gujarat where it had managed just 10 of the 35 seats in 2012. The BJP got 25 seats.
Ahmedabad, Vadodara and Surat
The BJP seems to have held on to its urban voter base. Gujarat’s three major cities – Ahmedabad, Vadodara and Surat account for about 36 constituencies of which BJP won 31 this time around. While this is down from the 33 that the party had won in 2012, of the 70-odd urban seats in the state party will win 57 seats while the Congress gets only 16.
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