CHENNAI ■ MADURAI ■ VIJAYAWADA BENGALURU ■ KOCHI ■ HYDERABAD ■ VISAKHAPATNAM ■ COIMBATORE ■ KOZHIKODE ■ THIRUVANANTHAPURAM ■ BELAGAVI ■ BHUBANESWAR ■ SHIVAMOgGA ■ MANGALURU ■ TIRUPATI ■ TIRUCHY ■ TIRUNELVELI ■ SAMBALPUR ■ HUBBALLI ■ DHARMAPURI ■ KOTTAYAM ■ KANNUR ■ VILLUPURAM ■ KOLLAM ■ TADEPALLIGUDEM ■ NAGAPATTINAM ■ THRISSUR ■ KALABURAGI ■ ■ bhubaneswar l friday l december 09, 2022 l `9.00 l PAGES 12 l jeypore EDITION Gujarat 52.50% BJP VOTE SHARE 27.28% 12.92% 7.3% Cong AAP Others 43% BJP 43.9% Cong hIMACHAL 1.10% AAP 12% Others 2017 BJP 48.8% Cong 41.7% Gujarat 2017 BJP 49.1% Cong 41.4% W H I C H PA R T Y G O T W H AT Himachal 25 BJP 40 Cong 156 BJP 3 Ind Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his colleagues being garlanded during the BJP’s victory celebrations, at the party office in New Delhi on Thursday | PTI Total: 68 seats 17 Cong 5 AAP 4 Others Total: 182 seats Mother of all Modi mandates in GUjarat Gujarat BJP equals Left Front’s Bengal record of seven consecutive terms  Cong wrests HP  AAP qualifies for national party status S h a h i d F a r i d i @ New Delhi Brand Modi registered a historic victory in the Gujarat elections where it shattered all previous records and confined the opposition Congress to its worst-ever tally which is insuf, ficient to even claim the post of leader of opposition in the state Assembly. To get the post, the Congress needs a minimum of 19 seats in the 182-member House, but has only 17. The BJP under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who addressed 31 rallies in the state, won 156 seats and is set to form a government for the seventh consecutive term, equaling the Left Front record in West Bengal. The party also surpassed its previous best performance of winning 127 seats in the state in 2002, and bettered Madhavsinh Solanki’s all-time record of winning 149 seats for the Congress in 1985. Such was the popularity of the BJP in this election that it swept the tribal and minority seats, which were considered Congress strongholds before this election. The Congress citadel of Saurashtra, which helped bring the party within striking distance of power in the 2017 election, also came crumbling down under the BJP’s onslaught. As celebrations broke out, the party’s Gujarat president C R Patil announced that Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel will take a fresh oath of office on December 12. The ceremony will be attended by the prime minister, home minister Amit Shah and national president J P Nadda, besides a number of Union ministers and chief ministers. Addressing par ty workers at the BJP’s Delhi headquarters, Modi termed the Gujarat victory as the beginning of the golden period for new India. He said the BJP will deliver a developed India to the youth of the country by 2047. Nadda attributed the landslide to the prime minister’s credibility and people’s trust in his leadership. Amit Shah termed the victory as a rejection of those who do politics of hollow promises, freebies and appeasement. He said it shows the “unwavering faith of the public in Narendra Modi’s development model”. The other state that went to polls — Himachal Pradesh — saw the Congress wresting power from the BJP The grand . old party won 40 seats against the BJP’s 25. Unpopularity of Chief Minister Jairam Thakur and the Congress party’s election promises of restoring the old pension scheme, free 300 units of power and `1,500 allowance to women saw the state continuing the decades-old tradition of not re-electing a sitting government. The Congress frontrunner for the post of Himachal chief minister, Kaul Singh Thakur, lost the election just like BJP’s Prem Kumar Dhumal did while his party won the last election. Another senior Congress leader, Asha Kumari, who was also in the running for CMship, lost. The top contenders for the post now are state party president Pratibha Singh, senior MLA Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu, state working president Rajendra Rana, who had defeated Dhumal in the last election, former state president Kuldip Rathore, and leader of opposition in the outgoing House Mukesh Agnihotri. In Gujarat, the AAP garnered nearly 13% votes, bringing down the Congress share from 40% in the last election to 27%. The AAP’s vote share catapulted the party to the status of being a national party . Naveen magic turns tables on BJP in Padampur E x p r e s s N e w s Se r v i c e @ Bhubaneswar/Sambalpur Barsha Singh Bariha with the winning candidate’s certificate Pained by personal attacks on Barsha: CM Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik said he was deeply pained by the personal and vile attacks by BJP on Barsha Singh Bariha and decided to stand by her during the campaign in Padampur bypoll. “I want to tell BJP that people of Odisha will never support disrespect to women,” he said | P3 Putting the recent Dhamnagar loss behind, the BJD romped home in style, steamrolling the BJP, in the keenly watched Padampur bypoll, result of which was announced on Thursday . In the face of a high blitz campaigning by the BJP, greenhorn Barsha Singh Bariha trounced the much-experienced Pradeep Purohit of the saffron party by a margin of 42,679 votes to retain the seat for the ruling party . Barsha pocketed 1,20,807 votes while Purohit could garner 78,128 votes. Congress was pushed to a distant third position as party veteran and two-time MLA Satya Bhusan Sahu managed to poll only 3,594 votes. Ten candidates, including five independents, were in the fray The bypoll was necessitated . by the death of sitting MLA Bijaya Ranjan Singh Bariha. While the BJD had fielded Bariha’s 29-year-old daughter Barsha, BJP had pinned hope on Purohit, who had won the seat in 2014 and lost to Bariha senior in 2019 with a margin of 5,734 votes. Voting for the bypoll was held on December 5 with a record 81 per cent (pc) voters exercising their franchise. The votes were counted amidst tight security on Thursday . Barsha not only got the highest votes polled by any candidate, including her father, in the constituency before but also pushed the party vote share up by around 17 pc. She polled 58 pc votes against the BJP’s 37.51. Though BJP bagged 563 more votes than 2019, its share dropped by Continued on P5 around one pc this time.  Gujarat results have proved that the common man aspires to seeing India as a developed nation. Whenever people want their aspirations fulfilled, the BJP comes as their first choice Victory and defeat happen in a democracy and it is not permanent. We’ll continue to fight our battle. It is our ideological fight. It’s a long journey and we’ll rectify shortcomings Narendra Modi, Prime Minister Mallikarjun Kharge, Congress president Gujarat is considered a BJP stronghold. This time, we breached the fortress. Next time, we will win it Arvind Kejriwal, AAP convenor and Delhi CM