Lok Sabha election results 2019: BJP wins one seat, leads with heavy margin in four others in Uttarakhand

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has won one seat and is leading in the remaining four parliamentary constituencies with a heavy margin in Uttarakhand on Thursday.

BJP won the Nainital-Udhamsingh Nagar seat with a whopping margin of 3,39, 096 votes. BJP candidate Ajay Bhatt who secured 7,72,195 votes including 7022 postal ballots defeated former CM and Congress leader Harish Rawat who received 4,33,099 votes including 1998 postal ballots. The counting for the remaining seats was underway until 9 pm.

The saffron party swept the 2014 general elections winning all five seats. The overall vote percentage of BJP was 34.1 followed by Congress with 21, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) at 2.9, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) 1.0 while others bagged 41.

The exit polls had projected on Sunday that the BJP would win four to five seats in the hill state with the Congress either getting zero or one of them.

Poll analysts said, unlike the last polls, the vote share of the BJP will cross at least the 50% mark this year.

“The BJP’s campaign strategy, connect and above all Modi wave has lead to the party’s success not only in Uttarakhand but across the country. In the state, it should be able to cross at least 50% vote share, leaving remaining 50% for rest of the parties,” Jay Singh Rawat, a poll analyst in Dehradun, said.

At 9 pm, the BJP’s Ajay Tamta was leading from the Almora seat with 2,21,154 votes, Tirath Singh Rawat was leading from the Pauri Garhwal seat with 2,85,003 votes and Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ was leading from Haridwar with 2,58,729 votes and Mala Rajya Laxmi Shah with 2,93,390 votes.

Harish Rawat, who initially wanted to contest from two seats Haridwar and Nainital, had to settle with Nainital banking on Thakur-Brahmin votes. But, this game plan didn’t work for him despite the constituency is dominated by Thakurs. Rawat is a Thakur while Bhatt is a Brahmin. What weakened Rawat’s stand was Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Rudrapur during the campaigning.

Harish Rawat had earlier lost assembly election from two seats Haridwar Rural and Kichha.

The BJP fielded its three sitting members of Parliament — Mala Rajya Laxmi Shah from Tehri Garhwal, Ajay Tamta from Almora and Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ from Haridwar.

Shah defeated the Congress candidate and son of former CM Vijay Bahuguna, Saket Bahuguna, in 2014 with a margin of 192, 503 votes. Ajay won against Congress’ Pradeep Tamta with a margin of 95,690 votes and Nishank defeated Renuka Rawat by 177,822 votes.

In the remaining two seats, Pauri Garhwal and Nainital-Udhamsingh Nagar, former CMs BC Khanduri and Bhagat Singh Koshyari said they won’t contest the election. The party then fielded Tirath Singh Rawat, its national general secretary from Pauri seat, and state unit’s president Ajay Bhatt from Nainital.

Tirath vacated the Chaubattakhal assembly segment in the 2017 polls for Satpal Maharaj which he won in the 2012 assembly election. He was then made the national secretary of the party. After Khanduri denied contesting, as his son Manish Khanduri was also contesting from the same seat from Congress party, Tirath was the obvious choice.

Bhatt, however, was defeated during the assembly election in 2017 by Congress’s Karan Mahra. He had won the seat before that but the BJP failed to make its government in the state.