The Bharatiya Janata Party’s Himachal Pradesh chief Satpal Singh Satti lost to the Congress in Una on Monday. The saffron party’s chief ministerial candidate Prem Kumar Dhumal (pictured above with the prime minister) also ceded defeat to the Congress’ Rajinder Rana in Sujanpur, though the Election Commission has not declared the result yet. This comes despite the party winning the state.

As of 5.15 pm, Dhumal was trailing by almost 3,000 votes. Dhumal held the chief ministerial post in the state twice before, from March 1998 to March 2003 and from January 2008 to December 2012.

The BJP had announced Dhumal as its chief ministerial candidate just eight days before the elections. The saffron party had hoped that its last-minute change to its usual strategy, of not naming the chief ministerial candidate till the results are announced, would solidify its victory.

With Dhumal’s loss, the party would now have to look for a new chief ministerial candidate. Union Health Minister JP Nadda was the other potential chief ministerial candidate.

The BJP’s decision to make a last-minute alteration was put down to concerns that Dhumal and his supporters within the state unit would display their unhappiness if he were not declared the chief ministerial candidate.

The saffron party’s state president Satpal Singh Satti, lost to Satpal Singh Raizada by a margin of 3,196 votes in the Una constituency. Satti had won the 2012 Assembly elections from the same constituency with a margin of 4,746 votes.