Seventeen seats in Madhya Pradesh and 14 in Rajasthan were decided by a margin of less than 1% in the recently-conducted Assembly elections, according to election data.

In Madhya Pradesh, where the Congress edged out the Bharatiya Janata Party by five seats, the two parties were involved in close contests in 15 seats. Nine of those constituencies went to the Congress while six were won by the BJP.

Medical education minister in the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government, Sharad Jain, lost Jabalpur North to the Congress’ Vinay Saxena by 0.4% of the vote percentage. He is among 13 ministers in the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government to lose the elections. The other ministers who were defeated are Umashankar Gupta, Deepak Joshi and Rustam Singh.

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In Rajasthan, much like Madhya Pradesh, 14 races were decided by a margin of less than 1%. The saffron party won seven of the 12 seats where it was involved in close contests with the Congress. Rajendra Rathore, the state parliamentary affairs minister in the Vasundhara Raje government, won Churu by a margin of 1%. However, his other ministerial colleagues were not so lucky, with 13 losing their seats.

In Chhattisgarh, the Congress won comfortably with 72 of the 90 seats being decided by 5% or more. There were almost no close calls in the state. Telangana also presented a similar picture, with the Telangana Rashtra Samithi winning 82 of its 88 seats by a convincing margin. The rest were decided by a margin of less than 2%.

In Mizoram, Tuivawl in the north witnessed the closest race of the entire election as Mizo National Front’s Lalchhandama Ralte edged out the Congress candidate by three votes. The MNF, which was in power between 1998 and 2008, won five seats by a margin of less than 2%.