The Congress won Himachal Pradesh from the BJP with a 43.90 percent vote share, winning 40 seats in the 68-member Assembly in the hill state that has a tradition of voting out incumbent governments since 1985.
Despite receiving 43% of the vote, the BJP only managed to win 25 seats, with many segments seeing lower victory margins.
Three Independents were also victorious in the assembly elections, the results of which were announced on Thursday.
The Congress’ vote share increased in comparison to previous assembly elections.
The BJP and Congress ran in all 68 constituencies, while the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) ran in 67, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in 53, and the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) in 11.
The AAP did not open an account, and the CPI-M did not win any seats, including its sitting MLA from Theog.
The AAP received 1.10 percent of the vote, the CPI-M 0.66 percent, the BSP 0.35 percent, Independents and others received 10.39 percent, and NOTA received 0.59 percent.
The difference in vote shares between the Congress and the BJP was highlighted by both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief J P Nadda in their post-election speeches to party workers in Delhi.
The BJP used the slogan “Raj nahin, riwaz badlega,” which translates to “the convention will change, not the government,” but failed to deviate from the trend. Since 1985, Himachal Pradesh has not returned an incumbent government to power.
Nadda thanked BJP workers in his home state of Himachal Pradesh for their efforts, saying, “raj may have changed, but ‘riwaz’ also changed as there was a gap of less than 1% in the vote share of the top two parties.”
The BJP won 44 seats in the 2017 state elections, the Congress 21, the CPI(M) one, and the Independents two. The BJP received 48.8 percent of the vote, the Congress received 41.7 percent, the Independents received 6.3 percent, the CPI(M) received 1.5 percent, and NOTA received 0.9 percent.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi thanked the people of Himachal Pradesh for his party’s “decisive victory” and assured them that every promise made by the party would be kept.
Conceding defeat, Chief Minister Jairam Thakur said he respected the people’s mandate and resigned to the governor.
According to official sources, Governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar has accepted his resignation.
