Members of the INDIA bloc on Saturday won the bypolls to 10 of the 13 assembly seats across seven states and said that the results were a reflection of the growing discontent against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which won only two of the constituencies that voted on July 10.
Although the results have little bearing on the equations in the respective state assemblies, they are likely to provide impetus to a buoyed Opposition after the Lok Sabha elections, which saw the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) come to power for the third consecutive time, but with a reduced majority.
Of the 13 seats that went to polls, the BJP had held three, Congress two and the Trinamool Congress (TMC), Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), Janata Dal United or JD(U) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) one each. Three seats were held by Independent candidates before the bypolls.
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The Congress won four seats — two each in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand; the TMC won all four seats that polled in Bengal; the AAP won the lone Punjab seat and DMK the one Tamil Nadu seat. The BJP won one seat each in Himachal and MP. The one seat that polled in Bihar was won by an Independent candidate.
“This victory shows that the people have completely rejected the arrogance, misgovernance and negative politics of the BJP. This is also strong proof of the falling political credibility of (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi, (home minister Amit )Shah,” said Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge.
Rae Bareli MP and Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi said that the results proved that the “web of fear and illusion woven by the BJP” has been broken.
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“Every class, including farmers, youth, labourers, businessmen… wants to completely destroy the dictatorship and establish the rule of justice,” he said in a post on X.
Former Himachal Pradesh chief minister and senior BJP leader Jai Ram Thakur said the party accepted the mandate.
“Our fight for the welfare of the people of the state would continue from the road to the Vidhan Sabha.”
The BJP suffered the most significant damage in West Bengal, where the chief minister Mamata Banerjee-led TMC won all four seats, wresting three of them — Bagda, Ranaghat Dakshin and Raiganj — from the BJP. In Maniktala, a seat where the bypoll was necessitated after the death of former state minister and TMC MLA Sadhan Pandey, his wife Supti Pandey beat the BJP’s Kalyan Chaubey by over sixty thousand votes. But more significantly, the TMC also swept both Ranaghat Dakshin and Bagda, the seats which have a significant presence of Matua community, a traditional BJP vote base.
In Raiganj, the TMC’s Krishna Kalyani beat the BJP’s Manas Kumar Das by 50,000 votes.
“The trend across India is against the BJP. Even the earlier mandate (of Lok Sabha elections) was not in favour of NDA,” the TMC chief said.
The BJP accused the TMC of indulging in violence and blamed the ruling party’s “pressure tactics” for the drop in its tally. “The BJP had to face guns and bombs and couldn’t stop the attacks on its vote bank. Despite repeatedly telling the ECI about political violence,the central forces were not utilised. We will fight back ,” Samik Bhattacharya, BJP spokesperson, said.
Bypolls to Dehra, Hamirpur and Nalagarh in Himachal Pradesh were necessitated after the three Independents who had voted in favour of the BJP in the Rajya Sabha polls on February 27 resigned on March 22. They joined the BJP the next day but their resignations were accepted by the Speaker on June 3. The BJP had fielded the Independents from their respective seats as party candidates. The Congress won two of the seats and the BJP bagged one. From the Dehra seat, Kamlesh Thakur, the wife of Himachal Pradesh CM Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, emerged victorious defeating BJP candidate Hoshiyar Singh by over 9,000 votes. The Congress now has 40 MLAs in the 68-member assembly, providing stability to the Sukhu government, which stared at an uncertain future a couple a few months ago.
“This is the victory of people over money power. The voters have delivered a strong rebuke to the politics of horse-trading and have voted to maintain political integrity in the state,” Sukhu said
In Uttarakhand, the Congress was able to regain some political face, after it won two bypoll seats, just over a month after it lost all 5 Lok Sabha seats in the state for the third consecutive term. To be sure, neither of the two seats were held by the BJP — one was held by the BSP and the other by the Congress — but both saw a fierce political battle.
In Manglaur, All India Congress Committee (AICC) secretary and three-time MLA Qazi Nizamuddin defeated BJP’s Kartar Singh Bhadana by a slender 422 vote margin. The election had been necessitated after the death of sitting BSP candidate Sarwat Karim Ansari, and his son Ubaidur Rahman finished third. Lakhpat Singh Butola of the Congress won his first-ever assembly elections from the Badrinath seat, defeating the BJP’s Rajendra Singh Bhandari by a margin of 5,224 votes. The seat had fallen vacant after Bhandari, then the Congress MLA, switched allegiances to the BJP.
BJP state president Mahendra Bhatt said, “We will look into the reasons for defeats in both seats.”
Uttarakhand Congress chief Karan Mahara said, “In these elections, our party stood as one unit…we have been working to strengthen our cadre for the last two years. This is good for democracy.”
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The one place where the Congress faced a setback was in Madhya Pradesh’s Amarwara seat—considered a bastion because it falls in the Chhindwara region which is home to former chief minister Kamal Nath—where its candidate Dheeran Sah lost to the BJP’s Kamlesh Shah by 3,252 votes.
Three-time MLA Kamlesh Shah was the incumbent legislator, but had quit the Congress and joined the BJP. Kamlesh Shah said, “I am happy that residents of Amarwara gave me a fourth chance to serve them. I will change the face of my area with development.” The Congress, which faced a setback in a seat that the BJP had only won twice before since independence, however said the ruling party had misused government machinery.
In Bihar’s Rupauli, independent candidate Shankar Singh, who had quit the Lok Janshakti Party to contest the elections as an independent, stunned both the NDA and the INDIA alliances by defeating Kalandhar Mandal of the JDU by 8211 votes, relegating the RJD’s Bima Bharti to third place.
The bypoll had been necessitated by the resignation of MLA Bima Bharti who was a five time MLA, but quit the party to contest the Purnea Lok Sabha polls on a RJD ticket—a seat that independent candidate Pappu Yadav won.
In Punjab, the AAP retained its hold on the Jalandhar West assembly seat with its candidate Mohinder Bhagat defeating BJP’s Sheetal Angural by 37,325 votes in the bypoll. The bypoll to this seat was necessitated following the resignation of Angural as AAP legislator who joined the BJP in March. With this victory, the AAP will now have 91 MLAs in the 117-member Punjab assembly. The Congress has 15 MLAs, SAD three, BJP two, BSP one and one Independent.
Bhagat said voters had spoken in favour of AAP because of their satisfaction with the Bhagwant Mann-led dispensation. “People love and respect Mann. While voting, people kept in mind the welfare works carried out by the chief minister.”
Punjab BJP chief Sunil Jakhar said, “We expect the state government will start development works in the state, put an end to people’s hardships, take action against rampant corruption and improve the law-and-order situation.”
The ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam emerged victorious in the bypoll to the Vikravandi constituency by a margin of 67,757 votes and NDA constituent Pattali Makkal Katchi finished second with 56,296 votes.
“BJP must realise that without respecting regional sentiments it cannot run the government and the party,” DMK chief and Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin said.
