Madhya Pradesh too rode the BJP wave, with the party winning all but two of the 29 Lok Sabha seats in the State. In Guna, Jyotiraditya Scindia and in Chindwara, Kamal Nath, both Congress leaders and Union Ministers, countered the wave and won handsome victories.
At a press conference, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan gave credit to Mr. Modi, BJP president Rajnath Singh, party workers and the people of the country.
In Gwalior and Satna, the fortunes of the Congress and the BJP see-sawed right through counting. In the former, BJP State president Narendra Singh Tomar won by a margin of 29,000 votes. In Satna, Ganesh Singh of the party defeated Ajay Singh, former State Minister and son of former Congress leader Arjun Singh, by 8,000 votes.
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The trend in favour of the BJP was so strong across the State that party candidates won with margins of over one lakh, except in Gwalior and Satna. The former Union Minister, Sumitra Mahajan, won from Indore with the highest victory margin of 4.66 lakh followed by senior party leader Sushma Swaraj, who won by 4.1 lakh votes in Vidisha.
The Congress leaders who lost include party vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s core team member Meenakshi Natarajan, former Union Ministers Kantilal Bhuria and Arun Yadav, and Laxman Singh, brother of senior Congress leader Digivijaya Singh. Ms. Natarajan, contesting again from Mandsaur, lost by three lakh votes. Mr. Scindia won by a margin of 1.2 lakh and Mr. Nath by 1.1 lakh.