Vadodara: Godhra, the 'Ground Zero' of the 2002 Gujarat riots, witnessed a edge-of-the-seat battle with Congress turncoat CK Raulji scraping through with a meagre margin of just 258 votes.
Raulji, a confidante of Gujarat's old warhorse Shankarsinh Vaghela, had defected to the BJP alon with 14 other Congress MLAs after the latter quit the party.
Contesting on a BJP ticket this time, he was leading the polls till the 12th round of counting, but suddenly began trailing going on to concede a lead of 9,000 votes to Rajendrasinh Parmar of Congress. Sources said that Parmar had started gaining as the votes of the booths from the western side of Godhra town were being counted in this period. The area is dominated by the minority community. The lead started depleting again subsequently. The polls were decided only when the VVPAT machine slips were counted and Raulji sneaked through.
