INDIA Bloc parties won the first big electoral battle after the Lok Sabha poll results last month, winning 10 of the 13 Assembly seats across seven states where bypolls were held. The BJP, on the other hand, won just two seats — Hamirpur in Himachal Pradesh and Amarwara in Madhya Pradesh — while ally JD(U) lost its seat in Bihar to an Independent.
The BJP candidate who was an Independent Candidate last time won and retained his seat in Himachal Pradesh.
The Trinamool Congress (TMC) in West Bengal saw the biggest gain, retaining its seat while wresting three more from the BJP. The Congress, which had two seats (one each in MP and Uttarakhand), lost its MP seat but gained one more in Uttarakhand, and two in Himachal Pradesh. The other INDIA bloc allies – DMK and AAP – retained their single seats in Tamil Nadu and Punjab respectively.
The BSP lost its single seat in Uttarakhand.
Overall, the results seem to have gone largely in favour of the ruling parties in the states. The ruling TMC won all the four seats in West Bengal, while the ruling Congress won two of the three seats in Himachal Pradesh. Similarly, the ruling parties won the single seats in Punjab (AAP), Madhya Pradesh (BJP) and Tamil Nadu (DMK).
Uttarakhand and Bihar, however, bucked the trend as the candidates of the ruling parties – BJP and JD(U) respectively – were defeated, by the Congress in both seats in Uttarakhand, and an Independent in Bihar.
In Madhya Pradesh, the BJP’s Kamlesh Pratap Shah won the Amarwara seat by a margin of 3,027 votes against the Congress’s Dheeran Sah Sukharam Das Invati. The bypoll was necessitated after Shah left the Congress for the BJP in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections.
In Tamil Nadu, the ruling DMK retained its Vikravandi seat, with its candidate, Anniyur Siva, defeating NDA constituent Pattali Makkal Katchi’s Ambumani C by a margin of 67,757 votes. The AIADMK and DMDK had announced a boycott of the bypoll, which was necessitated due to the death of DMK legislator N Pugazhenthi in April this year.
In Punjab, the ruling AAP retained its Jalandahar West seat, with its candidate, Mohinder Bhagat, winning by a comfortable margin of 37,325 votes. The BJP’s Sheetal Angural was second, while Congress’s Surinder Kaur came third. The Congress and AAP, both part of the INDIA bloc, had contested the Lok Sabha elections separately in Punjab — a template repeated in the bypoll. The seat fell vacant after Angural resigned as the AAP legislator and joined the BJP in March.
In Manglaur, three-time MLA and senior Congress leader Qazi Mohammad Nizamuddin defeated the BJP’s Kartar Singh Bhadana by just 422 votes. The seat fell vacant after the death of BSP MLA Sarwat Karim Ansari in October last year. The BSP fielded Ansari’s son, Ubaidur Rahaman, who came third.
In Bihar, Independent candidate Shankar Singh won the Rupauli seat by 8,246 votes, defeating JD(U)’s Kaladhar Prasad Mandal. Shankar Singh had recently quit the LJP (Ram Vilas) headed by Union Minister Chirag Paswan.
The bypoll was necessitated by the resignation of sitting JD(U) MLA Bima Bharti, who quit the party to contest the Lok Sabha elections on an RJD ticket. Following her loss from Purnia Lok Sabha seat, she contested the bypoll as an RJD candidate and came third.
Barring Maniktala, where the bypoll was necessitated by the death of state minister and veteran TMC leader Sadhan Pande, the other three seats — Ranaghat Dakshin, Bagda and Raiganj – fell vacant after their BJP MLAs resigned to contest the Lok Sabha polls on the TMC symbol.
The TMC candidates won by comfortable margins in all four seats – by 62,312 votes in Maniktala, 50,077 votes in Raiganj, 30,048 votes in Ranaghat-Dakshin, and 33,455 votes in Bagda.
In Uttarakhand, a month after its third consecutive whitewash in the Lok Sabha elections, the Congress retained Badrinath and wrested Manglaur from the BSP.
The Badrinath seat had fallen vacant after three-term MLA and former state minister Rajendra Singh Bhandari left the Congress for the BJP, which fielded him as its candidate this time. He lost to Congress’s Lakhapat Singh Butola by 5,224 votes. The win in Badrinath gains significance as the Opposition party has raised the issue of the BJP losing elections in important religious places after its Ayodhya defeat.
Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu’s wife and Congress candidate Kamlesh Thakur won the Dehra Assembly seat by a margin of 9,399 votes, defeating two-time MLA Hoshyar Singh. The Congress’s Hardeep Singh Bawa also defeated K L Thakur in Nalagarh by 8,990 votes. The BJP’s Ashish Sharma, however, retained the Hamirpur seat by a margin of 1,571 votes.
Dehra and Hamirpur Assembly seats are part of the Hamirpur Lok Sabha constituency, represented by Union Minister Anurag Thakur, who had led the BJP’s campaign in the bypolls.
In the 68-member Himachal Pradesh Assembly, the Congress tally has now increased to 40, while the BJP is at 28 seats.
In West Bengal, the ruling TMC re-established its dominance, retaining its seat and wresting three more from the BJP. While the BJP came a distant second in all the four seats, the Left-Congress alliance candidates lost their deposits in three of the four seats.