Congress Wins Himachal, Race Begins For Chief Minister's Chair: 10 Points

The Congress has won 40 of the 68 constituencies — , well past the majority mark — while the BJP got 25. Independents have won the remaining three seats.

The much-needed win is already making the Congress jittery, and it is planning to move the MLAs to Chandigarh, 90 km away, to counter any immediate poaching attempts by the BJP, leaders told NDTV. Exit polls had kept all possibilities open.

When the Congress looked set to win the hill state — on a day of historic loss in Gujarat — the first shot at the chief minister's chair came from the camp of state party chief Pratibha Singh, wife of the late Virbhadra Singh who was the Congress's tallest leader here until his death last year. Her son and MLA Vikramditya Singh said, "As a son, I want Pratibha ji to get a big responsibility."

Besides the issues of development, emotive appeals and campaign strategies, two factors will be at play as Himachal's poll results come out today. One, whether the Himalayan state's "rivaaj" (tradition) of changing the government every election continues — and it did. Two, whether the large number of rebels can dent the BJP's chances at bucking that tradition — that needs further analysis.

In the 2017 assembly elections, the BJP won a comfortable majority of 44; the Congress got 21, with one seat going to CPI-M, and two to Independents. The BJP effected a generational change in leadership as its presumptive chief minister, Prem Kumar Dhumal, lost his seat, and Jairam Thakur got the chair. 

Himachal has never re-elected the ruling party after 1985 — a trend that the BJP, powered by PM Narendra Modi's aggressive campaign, saw as a primary factor. The BJP slogan was "Raj nahin, riwaaj badlega", meaning "the tradition will change, not the government". The BJP bucked a similar trend in another hill state, Uttarakhand, and cited that repeatedly in Himachal Pradesh, home state of the party's national president JP Nadda.

"Rivaaj" was the reason why the Congress, which ran a lowkey campaign — it said that was a thought-out strategy — sounded confident that it'll get its turn. The stakes were particularly high for the Congress, which has been on a losing spree for over two years now, not registering a single state victory on its own. It currently has chief ministers only in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, both of which go to polls in 2023.

While BJP saw rebels across the state, the Congress has a tussle at the top. There's no Virbhadra Singh, the ex-royal and six-time chief minister who was the party's tallest leader in the state until his death last year. His wife Pratibha Singh, currently an MP, is the state Congress chief; and their son Vikramaditya Singh is a candidate. Sukhvinder Sukhu and Mukesh Agnihotri are other claimants.

The promise of restarting the old pension scheme spurred the Congress campaign as a large chunk of the population is in government jobs. The BJP has made its "double engine" pitch, implying that having the same party in power at the Centre and in the state guarantees development on all fronts.

The AAP made some noises here after winning the neighbouring state of Punjab early this year. But it later chose to concentrate on the Delhi civic polls, which it won yesterday, and the Gujarat assembly polls, where it won enough votes to get 'national party' status.