NEW DELHI: In a
landslide victory
in the assembly bypolls, the opposition
INDIA bloc
on Saturday bagged 10 out of 13 seats that went to polling across seven states.
BJP, which after the 2024 Lok Sabha election managed to retain power at the Centre with the help of its NDA allies, faced a major setback in the polls as it could pull off only two seats.
The bypolls were held in West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Tamil Nadu.
Besides West Bengal, Himachal Pradesh, Tamil and Punjab, where the INDIA bloc is in power -- the
opposition
alliance also won seats in Bihar and Uttarakhand, which are BJP-ruled states.
However, Himachal Pradesh's Hamirpur seat was won by BJP's Ashish Sharma.
'Litmus test' in hill state
Byelections in Himachal were necessitated after three former Independent MLAs - Hoshyar Singh from Dehra in Kangra, Ashish Sharma from Hamirpur and KL Thakur from Nalagarh in Solan - had resigned in March this year and joined the
Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP). BJP gave tickets to all three former Independent MLAs.
The Congress had fielded Kamlesh Thakur, the wife of chief minister Sukhvinder Singh, against BJP's Hoshyar Singh in Dehra, Pushpinder Verma against BJP's Ashish Sharma in Hamirpur and Hardeep Singh Bawa against BJP's KL Thakur in Nalagarh.
In a litmus test for the former three Independent MLAs, who CM Sukhu repeatedly accused of being part of a BJP conspiracy to topple his government, two of them lost the polls as only Ashish Sharma managed to win from the Hamipur assembly seat.
TMC's clean sweep in West Bengal
After facing a rude shock due to an unexpected slip in its Lok Sabha tally in West Bengal, from 18 seats in 2019 to 12 in 2024, BJP on Saturday was again routed in the bypolls as ruling TMC won all the four seats that went to polls.
Trinamool Congress (TMC) candidates Krishna Kalyani, Madhuparna Thakur, Mukut Mani Adhikari and Supti Pandey won Raiganj, Bagda, Ranaghat Dakshin and Maniktala seats respectively.
With the massive victory, the ruling TMC in West Bengal won the Matua community-majority Bagda and Ranaghat Dakshin after a gap of eight years.
The BJP secured Ranaghat Dakshin, Bagda, and Raiganj segments in the 2021 assembly election. However, despite the win, the MLAs switched to the TMC.
The three seats fell vacant after MLAs Kalyani, Adhikari, and Biswajit Das of Bagda resigned from their posts to contest Lok Sabha polls on TMC tickets. Kalyani, who lost to BJP's Kartik Chandra Paul in the Lok Sabha polls, was re-nominated from Raiganj in the bypolls.
The Maniktala seat was won by the TMC in 2021 but became vacant after former state minister Sadhan Pandey died in February 2022.
BJP loses in Bihar & Uttarakhand
BJP, which is in power in Uttarakhand and Bihar, lost bypolls in the states. In Uttarkhand, the saffron party ceded both the seats that went to poll, while in Bihar an Independent won the election.
Congress's Lakhpat Singh Butola won the Badrinath assembly by-election on Saturday, defeating his nearest rival former minister and MLA BJP's Rajendra Singh Bhandari by 5,224 votes. Another Congress candidate Qazi Mohammad Nizamuddin won the Manglaur seat.
In Bihar, Independent candidate Shankar Singh won the Rupauli assembly seats, defeating JD(U) candidate Kaladhar Prasad Mandal by over 5,000 votes.
BJP wins Madhya Pradesh
Other than Himachal's Hamirpur, the only seat BJP managed to win was Madhya Pradesh's Amarwara assembly seat. BJP's Kamlesh Shah defeated Congress's Dhiren Shah Inavati by over 3,252 votes.
Big win for AAP in Punjab
AAP candidate Mohinder Bhagat triumphed in the Jalandhar West by-election, securing whopping 58 per cent of the votes. Bhagat's victory marked a significant setback for Congress, which fell to third place behind the BJP.
DMK retains Vikravandi seat
The ruling DMK emerged victorious in the bypoll to the Vikravandi Assembly constituency by a margin of 67,757 votes and NDA constituent Pattali Makkal Katchi ended up runner-up with 56,296 votes.
DMK's Anniyur Siva alias A Sivashanmugam was in the lead position all through the vote-counting exercise and the margin between him and his nearest rival, PMK nominee C Anbumani widened round after round.
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