Fights that went down to the wire

JAIPUR: The 0.5 per cent difference in vote share between Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) could be better gauged by the few nail-biting finishes in which the result could have gone either way. Out of nine such contests, in which the

margin

was less than 1,000 votes, seven were a one-on-one fight between the two major parties.


It is worth noting that Congress party polled 1,39,3 5,201 votes (39.3%) and BJP polled 1, 37,57,502 votes (38.8%) with a difference of just 1,77,699 votes.

The most significant among the closely fought contests was the one in Asind constituency (

Bhilwara

), where the margin was as low as just 154 votes. BJP’s Jabbar Singh Sankhala somehow managed to scrape through as he beat Congress candidate Manish Mewara by the lowest margin in the assembly election.

The other such nail-biting finish was the contest between Congress rebel Khushveer Singh, who fought as an independent candidate and BJP’s Kesaram Choudhary. Singh, who won by a margin of only 251 votes, polled 58,921 votes as against Choudhary, who got 58,670 votes. Similarly, in

Pilibanga

(SC) the contest went down to the wire in which BJP’s Dharmendra Kumar, who polled 1,06,414 votes, defeated Congress party’s Vinod Kumar (1,06,136 votes) by a paltry 278 votes.

The most-talked about contest in the whole election was the fight between BJP’s Kalicharan Saraf and Congress party’s Archana Sharma from Malviya Nagar constituency. The fate of the two candidates switched with the culmination of each round of counting process, taking the fight to the final round. Finally, Sharaf won from the constituency by a margin of just 1,704 votes.

In another contest, BJP’s Nirmal Kumawat defeated Congress’s Vidyadhar Singh from

Phulera

constituency by a margin of only 1,132 votes. In Bundi as well, BJP candidate Ashok Dogra trounced Congress candidate Harimohan Sharma by a margin of 713 votes.