After suffering humiliating defeat in the 2018 assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, the BJP was expected to get trounced in the general elections here as well. However, the party managed to renew its fortunes and had secured promising leads in a majority of the constituencies in both states at the time of going to press at 4PM.
In Madhya Pradesh, the BJP was leading in 28 out of 29 constituencies with INC’s Kamal Nath’s son Nakul barely scraping past BJP’s Nathansaha Kawreti. It was still too close to call at 4PM. Kamalnath, who is Chief Minister of the state is himself barely scraping past BJP’s Vivek Sahu in the assembly by-poll held in the state. All other INC heavyweights including Jyotiraditya Scindia (Guna) and Meenakshi Natarajan (Mandsaur) were trailing. Even Digvijay Singh is trailing behind BJP’s Pragya Singh Thakur in Bhopal!
Meanwhile, in Rajasthan the BJP was leading in 24 out of 25 constituencies. Only Hanuman Beniwal of the Rashtriya Loktantrik Party was leading in Nagaur. Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot’s son Vaibhav Gehlot who was contesting on an INC ticket was trailing behind BJP’s Gajendra Singh Shekhawat in Jodhpur. Meanwhile, BJP veteran Jaswant Singh’s son Manavendra Singh who joined the INC in October 2018 was trailing behind BJP’s Kailash Choudhry in Barmer.