The Congress, which won 77 seats in the Gujarat Assembly elections against the BJP's tally of 99, can take some solace from the fact that sixteen Congress candidates lost by less than 3,000 votes.
Three of them lost by less than 1,000 votes.
In Godhra, which has a significant Muslim population, BJP candidate C K Raulji (who was the sitting Congress MLA from the same seat before joining the ruling party during the Rajya Sabha election earlier this year) won by a wafer-thin margin of 258 votes.
He defeated Congress candidate Rajendrasinh Parmar, while independent candidate Jaswantsinh Parmar got 18,856 votes. As many as 3,050 votes went to None of the Above(NOTA).
Senior BJP leader and education minister Bhupendrasinh Chudasama won by a thin margin of 327 votes, defeating Congress's Ashvinbhai Rathod in Dholka constituency.
As many as 2,347 votes were cast for NOTA, while an independent candidate, Shaktisinh Sisidiya, got 4,222 votes.
Another senior BJP leader, Saurabh Patel, who was finance minister in the Anandiben Patel government and an MLA from Akota constituency in Vadodara before being asked to contest from Botad this time, defeated Congress's D M Patel by a margin of 906 votes.
In Vijapur constituency, BJP's Ramanbhai Patel defeated Congress's Nathabhai Patel by 1,164 votes, which was less than 1,280 votes which went to NOTA.
Two senior Congress leaders, Arjun Modhwadia and Siddharth Patel, lost by margins of 1,855 and 2,839 votes, respectively.
Other constituencies where the margin of victory of BJP candidates was less than 3,000 are: Himmatnagar (1,712), Garidhar (1,876), Umreth (1,883), Rajkot Rural (2,179), Khambhat (2,318), Vagra (2,370), Matar (2,406), Pratij (2,551), Fatehpura (2,711) and Visnagar (2,869).
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