Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s charismatic leadership, Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s strategies and Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s untiring hard-work and his masterstroke of ‘Laadli Behna Yojana’ led the BJP to a landslide victory in Madhya Pradesh today.

The results of the 230 assembly seats in the MP Assembly elections, which were held in a single phase on 17 November, were announced today and the BJP was on the way to register a massive victory.

As per the real time results available by 4.30 pm from some constituencies where the vote counting process was already completed, the BJP had won 51 seats and the Congress managed victory on 16 seats.

As far as the leads were concerned on the remaining seats by the same time, BJP candidates were leading on 117 seats and the Congress was leading on 45 seats. Others had a lead on one seat.

The magnitude of the saffron party’s victory surprised even many BJP leaders. Union Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia commented mid-way through the counting process: “I was indeed sure of the BJP’s win in MP but had not fathomed that it would be so immense.”

MP CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan stated: “I had always said that we will win comfortably by a huge margin and form the government in MP again.” Mr Chouhan thanked and congratulated PM Modi, Amit Shah, BJP national president J P Nadda and all leaders and ground level workers of the BJP for the party’s sterling performance.

The BJP supporters and workers started celebrating and bursting firecrackers in the afternoon itself, justifying Home Minister Amit Shah’s prediction, during most of his poll rallies in MP, that there will be another Diwali this year when the BJP wins in Madhya Pradesh.

The BJP’s biggest win in MP had come in 2003, when Uma Bharti led the saffron party to victory with 173 seats while the Congress, under then CM Digvijaya Singh, was reduced to just 38 seats and the remaining seats went to others.

In 2013, the BJP again registered a huge win under CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan. The party won 165 seats and the opposition Congress managed 58. Others won on the remaining seats.