BJP to win Gujarat with overwhelming majority

Leading on 154 seats in the 182-member Assembly, the BJP is all set to form the government in Gujarat with an overwhelming majority. Gujarat has been a stronghold of the BJP for 27 years and this will be its seventh term. With a lead on 18 seats, the Congress is running a distant second. The AAP is ahead on only six seats and is struggling to enter even double digits.

BJP to win Gujarat with overwhelming majority

Leading on 154 seats in the 182-member Assembly, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is all set to form the government in Gujarat with an overwhelming majority. Gujarat has been a stronghold of the BJP for 27 years and this will be its seventh term.

With a lead in 18 seats, the Congress is running a distant second. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is ahead on only six seats and is struggling to enter even double digits. However, its CM candidate Isudhan Gadhvi is leading from the Khambhalia constituency.

While the BJP has won the lion’s share (53.4 per cent) of votes, the Congress has garnered only 26.7 per cent. AAP has managed to be popular with 13 per cent of the voters.

Interestingly, the opposition seems to have failed even in Morbi, where it tried to make a big issue of the bridge collapse. BJP candidate Kantilal Amrutiya is currently leading from this constituency.

The highest-ever number of seats any party has won in Gujarat earlier is 149, which was under the leadership of Congress chief minister Madhavsinh Solanki in 1985. In 2002, the BJP won the highest tally of 127 seats when Narendra Modi was the chief minister.

In the 2017 assembly elections, the BJP won 99 seats while the Congress was triumphant with 77, with others winning 6 seats. But the hope that Congress has raised in the last election has once again been shattered.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will lead his party's celebrations this evening at its Delhi headquarters at 6 pm.

"It is a victory of the party's double-engine development agenda. The massive verdict reflects people's trust in Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP. It is a victory of the agenda of development that the party has carried out in the state," Gujarat BJP spokesperson Yamal Vyas said to PTI.