BJP got highest vote share in Himachal; figures show overwhelming support for party, says state's chief minister Jai Ram Thakur

Shimla: The BJP got the highest vote share in the country in Himachal Pradesh and this shows the overwhelming support of the people for the party, Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur has said. BJP candidates retained all the four Lok Sabha seats in the state and got over 69 percent vote share this time, which is the highest in the country, he said. Compared to 53.85 percent in 2014, the BJP’s vote share in the state increased to 69.11 percent in this Lok Sabha election. The saffron party’s vote share in Gujarat, where it won all 26 Lok Sabha seats, was 62.21 percent. [caption id=“attachment_4439085” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  File image of Himachal Pradesh chief minister Jai Ram Thakur. Facebook[/caption] The Congress’ vote share in Himachal Pradesh decreased by 13.77 percentage points this time. Compared to 41.07 percent in 2014, it was only 27.3 percent in this general election. The big difference in the vote shares of the two parties shows the overwhelming support for the BJP, which swept the elections riding on the Modi wave, Thakur said. The Congress and the BJP were locked in direct contests on all seats in the hill state. BJP’s Kishan Kapoor, who won with a huge margin of 477623 votes from Kangra, got the highest vote share of 72.02 percent among individual party candidates in the state. Kapoor was followed by Anurag Singh Thakur who polled 69.04 percent of votes in Hamirpur, Ram Swaroop Sharma who got 68.75 percent of votes in Mandi and Suresh Kashyap who got 66.35 percent of votes in Shimla. Congress candidates were far behind their BJP rivals in all seats in terms of vote share with Ram Lal Thakur getting 28.63 percent of the votes in Hamirpur, Dhani Ram Shandil 27.3 percent in Shimla, Aashray Sharma 25.68 percent in Mandi and Pawan Kajal 24.59 percent in Kangra.