In another record, this time 40 BJP candidates won the election with margins of victory ranging between 50,000 and one lakh votes. The number of such candidates in the 2017 election was 21.
The highest margin of victory was achieved by the CM keeper Bhupendra Patel who won the Ghatlodia seat, defeating Amee Yajnik by a margin of 1.92 lakh votes. He was followed by Sandip Desai who defeated Prakash Contractor of AAP over the seat of Choryasi by a margin of 1.86 lakh votes. Hard Sanghavi he beat AAP’s PV Sarma on the Majura seat by a margin of 1.17 lakh votes.
This record not only reflects a decisive mandate in favor of the BJP by the electorate, but also highlights the failure of opposition parties to excite their supporters to vote in large numbers. The 2022 assembly poll was the first in which no candidate lost by a margin of less than 500 votes.
The lowest margin of victory in this election was 577 votes where Congress’s Bachubhai Arethiya lost to BJP’s Virendrasinh Jadeja. In the 2017, 2012, and 2007 assembly elections, two-three candidates lost by margins of less than 500 votes. Only 16 seats were decided in this election by a margin of less than 5,000 votes. Their number was 36 in the 2012 and 2017 assembly polls, and such seats were 48 in 2007 and 2002.
Another barometer of the 2022 poll which is a closing term for the ruling party is that 40 candidates – all from the BJP – won their seats by margins of victory of between 50,000 and 1 lakh votes. This is also the first time in Gujarat electoral politics that such a large number of candidates have won by such margins. In 2017 this number was 21 and in 2012 it was 17, which has progressively decreased in previous assembly polls.
Political observer Vishnu Pandya said this trend confirms that the BJP could galvanize its supporters to vote, while voters of other parties were lethargic. “Even Prime Minister Modi’s call for young voters to exercise their right to vote with the future of the state in mind 25 years from now seems to have worked in favor of the ruling party,” he said.
“2022 was a clear mandate for the BJP. Despite a decline in voter turnout, these trends show that committed BJP voters exercised their right to vote in large numbers,” said BJP state spokesman Yamal Vyas.
