The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) retained the Vidisha assembly seat by defeating its arch political rival in Madhya Pradesh, the Congress, by a margin of over 12,000 votes.
Counting for Vidisha Vidhan Sabha by-election was held at SSl Jain College Vidisha along with counting of votes for 29 lok Sabha constituencies in the state on Friday.
The counting which started from 8 am remained totally peaceful and transparent. Of the 11 candidates in the fray, BJP's Kalyan Singh Thakur defeated his nearest rival Shashank Bhargava of Congress by 12 thousand 226 votes. Thakur secured 68 thousand 961 votes and Bhargava 56 thousand 735 votes. Total number of valid votes was 1,30,180 while 1244 voters used NOTA.
A namesake of the BJP's winning candidate, independent Kalyan Singh Thakur, could secure only 153 votes.
Among other candidates, Samajwadi Party's Pandit Bhupendra Sharma secured 1254 votes, Samata Samadhan Party's Ajay Dube one thousand, Hindustan Janata Party's Kalkyan Singh Thakur 494, independent laxman Rao Naole 491, Mahanwadi Party's Naunit Ram Kushwa 382, independents Ram Singh Raghuvanshi 338 and Thakur Tulsiram 217, Bahujan Samajwadi Party's Hukum Singh 157 and independent Kalyan Singh Thakur secured 153 votes.
The Vidisha assembly by-election was necessitated as the chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan after registering victory at two places - Budhni and Vidisha — resigned from this constituency.Congress candidate Shashank Bhargava had lost to Chouhan by 16,966 votes, a narrow margin compared to the CM's performance in Budhni where he won by a massive 84,805 votes.
The BJP had forced Chouhan to contest from here because it did not want to lose its vote share ahead of the general elections.While Bhargava was again in the fray, the BJP fielded relatively unknown Kalyan Singh after deciding against Chouhan's wife Sadhna Singh's candidature.