Madhya Padesh: Shivraj Singh Chouhan decides not to stake claim to form government, to tender resignation

After the very close defeat in the Madhya Padesh assembly elections, BJP has decided not to stake claim to form the government in the state. In one of the closest results in an election, no party managed to win the majority of 116 seats required to form the government in the 230-member house. While the incumbent BJP won 109 seats, the opposition Congress party won 114 seats, two short of the majority mark.

The difference between the votes polled by the two parties is less than 50,000, with BJP’s share 0.1% more than Congress. According to results declared by the Election Commission, BJP got a total of 1,56,42,980 votes, while Congress bagged 1,55,95,153 votes. The different being just 47,827 votes, while is just 9% of NOTA votes polled in the state.

As no party had got a clear majority, it was speculated that BJP may try to form a government by getting the support of 4 independent, 1 SP and 2 BSP MLAs that have won the elections, although that scenario was very unlikely.

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Now putting all such speculations to rest, outgoing Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan has conceded defeat and announced that the party will not stake claim to form the government. He informed that he is going to tender his resignation to the Governor, making way for a new Chief Minister from Congress.

In the meanwhile, BSP supremo Mayawati has announced that her party will be supporting Congress in Madhya Pradesh. With the 2 MLAs of BSP, the Congress party will be comfortably cross the majority mark. Mayawati said that the decision was taken to keep BJP out of power.

OpIndia Staff: Staff reporter at OpIndia