Himachal Pradesh Counting: Victory for BJP in state

NEW DELHI: The counting for Himachal Pradesh Assembly elections, held on November 9, started today. Defeating the ruling Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has won the Himachal Pradesh Assembly election.
Exit polls have predicted a loss for the ruling Congress, and a brute majority for the BJP in the 68-seat Assembly. It is possible that the electorate is looking to the BJP's chief ministerial candidate Prem Kumar Dhumal to replace the scam-tainted incumbent Virbhadra Singh.
It would seem that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's jibes at the Congress's "zamanati sarkar" (on bail) in the state echoed with the people.
Post the predictions from the exit polls, the BJP said it was confident of a landslide victory, even as the Congress maintained that such polls have got things wrong even in the past.
This election saw people turn up in record numbers to vote. In fact, the state recorded its highest turnout of 74 percent this time. It is noteworthy that as many as 19,10,582 female voters exercised their franchise against 18,11,061 male voters in the hill state.
7,521 polling stations were pressed into service - an increase from the 2012 polls which saw 7,252 polling stations, and both Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trails and Electronic Voting Machines were used.
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