For every vote the Congress won, the BJP got almost three

For every vote the Congress party got across the five States where Assembly elections were held in February-March, the Bharatiya Janata Party got nearly 2.8 votes, and that explains the exuberant celebration in the party led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and its president, Amit Shah.

The BJP managed to get a total of 3.84 crore votes, of which nearly 90 per cent came from Uttar Pradesh, the country’s most populous State with over 20.4 crore people. The BJP secured 40 per cent of the votes polled in UP to win 312 seats, its best performance ever in that State.

In contrast, the Congress got only 1.39 crore votes across the five States, of which 43 per cent came from Punjab where it wrested control of the Assembly from the Shiromani Akali Dal-BJP alliance. Just a little over 39 per cent of its votes came from UP, where its performance was worse than in 2012. The Congress polled only six per cent of the votes cast in that State.

The Bahujan Samaj Party did not do too badly although its supremo Mayawati was bitter about the number of seats bagged in UP and Uttarakhand. It did manage to hold on to its traditional vote base in UP. The party got 22 per cent of the votes polled in the State but its seat share plunged due to the Modi wave. Overall, the party secured 1.99 crore votes across UP, Uttarakhand and Punjab, with 97 per cent of the votes coming from UP. Significantly, the party , got about 3.58 lakh more shares than the Samajwadi Party in UP.

The Samajwadi Party polled 1,89,23,689 votes to win 47 seats and garner 22 per cent of the vote-share, a seven percentage point dip over the 2012 elections, when it had romped home with 224 seats

The Aam Aadmi Party did not do as well as it hoped to, and its ambition to acquire a national footprint suffered a setback. However, AAP won more seats that the SAD-BJP alliance and is set to become the main Opposition party in the Punjab Assembly. AAP secured 20 seats compared to the SAD-BJP alliance’s 18. But its vote share (36.62 lakh) was lower than the 38.98 lakh votes SAD secured.

Perhaps, the most heartbreaking loss was that of human rights activist Irom Sharmila in Manipur. She contested against three-time chief minister Okram Ibobi Singh and managed to secure a mere 90 votes. But, then, Irom Sharmila is not the lone woman to have lost elections. Of the 655 women who contested, only 57 won and that’s less than eight per cent of all the seats that were up for grabs .

The elections also saw many more emphatic victories, with margins of over 10,000 votes in UP, Punjab and Uttarakhand, and more than 5,000 votes in Goa and Manipur. In 429 seats, the winner beat the next contestant by ober 10,000 votes.