New DelhiLast week, the results of the assembly by-elections to seven seats in six states were prima facie in favor of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in which the party won four seats, while earlier it had won only three seats. These.
As per the results announced on Sunday, the BJP has retained the seats of Gopalganj in Bihar, Gola Gokarnath in Uttar Pradesh and Dhamnagar in Odisha. In Telangana’s Munogaid and Haryana’s Adampur, the BJP had inducted the sitting MLAs who had resigned from their previous party. While she won the Adampur seat, she lost to Munogaid to rival Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS).
In Maharashtra, in the first elections since a rebel Shiv Sena faction led by now Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, Shiv Sena’s Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance, joined hands with the BJP in the state to topple the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). . Congress, BJP withdrew from the election at the last minute.
Even in the first elections in Bihar, the Nitish Kumar-led Janata Dal (United) had quit the NDA alliance earlier this year, to join hands with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), the BJP and the JD(U)-RJD alliance. The two had aligned. To settle for a draw.
The RJD retained the Mokama assembly seat, while Gopalganj went to the BJP. RJD lost from Gopalganj seat by just 1,794 votes. The seat is with the BJP since 2005, but RJD candidate Mohan Prasad Gupta gave a tough fight to BJP’s Kusum Devi, despite former MP Sadhu Yadav’s wife and Bahujan Samaj Party candidate Indira Yadav and All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul. Muslimeen (AIMIM) is making a dent in the core vote bank of RJD between Yadavs and Muslims. But for the BSP and AIMIM, the RJD might have defeated the BJP.
While Indira Yadav got 8,853 votes out of 168396 votes, AIMIM candidate Abdul Islam got 12,212 votes, which was a tough fight between RJD and BJP.
The BJP had fielded Kusum Devi, wife of late BJP MLA Subhash Singh, for the Gopalganj bypoll, but the margin of victory narrowed from 2020, when Subhash Singh won the seat for the BJP by a margin of over 36,000 votes. . The closest rival of Anirudh Prasad alias Sadhu Yadav of Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).
In Mokama, RJD candidate Neelam Devi defeated BJP’s Sonam Devi. The BJP leadership had fielded Sonam Devi a day after her husband and strongman Lalan Singh joined the party. BJP had also fielded each other bahubali, Surajbhan Singh, as well as Chirag Paswan of the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) to campaign for their candidate Sonam Devi. This is the first time the BJP contested the Mokarma seat, which was usually left to its allies.
Although Neelam Devi retained the seat for the RJD, the margin of victory fell to 16,741 votes against 35,757 when her husband Anant Singh defeated his nearest rival, JD(U)’s Rajeev Lochan Narayan Singh in 2020 for the party. had won it. , Anant Singh has repeatedly won the seat as both a JD(U) and RJD candidate. While he won Mokama in 2005 and 2010 as a JD(U) candidate, in 2015 as an independent and in 2020 under the RJD banner. The Mokama seat fell vacant due to the disqualification of sitting RJD MLA Anant Singh. Sentenced in a criminal case earlier this year.
The BJP was quick to use the bypoll results to target Nitish Kumar instead of the RJD, which is contesting in the name of the RJD-JD(U) grand alliance.
“I will thank the people for sending a strong message to the Grand Alliance that they have been rejected. Despite contesting elections there after 27 years, we got the highest number of votes in Mokama. In future, our performance will be better,” said the BJP state. President Sanjay Jaiswal told ThePrint.
The Bihar bypolls were keenly watched by both the BJP and the RJD-JD(U) as it was ahead of the crucial 2024 Lok Sabha elections. This has assumed even greater importance for the BJP as it will be the first time it will be contesting the Lok Sabha elections since the JD(U) alliance ended and it is seeing these elections as a “testing ground”. Was.
Union ministers including Home Minister Amit Shah are visiting the state to take stock of the party’s preparations for the Lok Sabha elections.
According to Sanjay Kumar of the Center for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), however, the by-election results should not be seen as an indication of the 2024 Lok Sabha election results or even the Bihar Assembly election. 2025.
“As far as these elections are concerned, I do not draw any conclusions for 2024, be it Bihar or Telangana. However, these elections boost the morale of the parties concerned. TRS is already in power so it will not have any effect in Telangana.
Kumar said: “If the BJP had won, it would have boosted the morale of the BJP and helped a little in expansion. In Bihar, definitely some consolation prize for BJP as it is no longer in alliance with JD(U) and it will give some confidence to BJP workers that it can win a seat on its own. However this does not give any guarantee that it will win in the future.
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Fighting in Haryana, Telangana, Maharashtra and Odisha
In Haryana’s Adampur, BJP candidate Bhavya Bishnoi – grandson of former Haryana Congress chief minister Bhajan Lal – emerged victorious in the prestigious Adampur bypoll. The seat was with Bhajanlal’s family since 1968. This is the first time the BJP has won this seat.
The by-election had to be held after Bhavya’s father and sitting Congress MLA Kuldeep Bishnoi joined the BJP in August. Expelled For cross voting against the party candidate from Congress in June.
One of the things that worked for Bhavya was that the dominant Jat vote was split between the Aam Aadmi Party, the Congress and the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD), all of which had fielded Jat candidates. Bhavya defeated Congress veteran Jai Prakash in Adampur seat by a margin of over 16,000 votes, improving Bishnoi’s vote share.
While Bhavya won 67,492 votes, her father Kuldeep secured 63,693 votes in the 2019 assembly elections. In 2014, Kuldeep got 48,224 votes as a candidate of the Haryana Janhit Congress Party – a party formed by his father Bhajan Lal after leaving the Congress in 2007.
In Telangana’s Munugode, the results came as a major relief to the TRS, especially after the BJP’s impressive performance in the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) elections earlier this year.
The BJP had won 48 of the 150 wards of the GHMC, while the state’s ruling party TRS won 55 and AIMIM 44.
The GMC’s defeat had prompted the TRS to view the bypolls as a battle for ‘prestige’.
TRS candidate Kusukuntala Prabhakar Reddy got 97,006 votes defeating BJP’s Komatireddy Raj Gopal Reddy by a margin of over 10,000 votes who got 86,697 votes. The Congress, which was in power in this constituency, got only 23,906 votes.
Sitting MLA Komatireddy Raj Gopal Reddy quit the Congress and resigned from his post in August, prompting a by-election. Reddy then joined the BJP and contested by-elections for the party.
While Munugode’s victory is seen as an impetus for the TRS party, BJP leaders are finding solace in the “tough fight” put up by him.
“As far as this election is concerned, while there were by-elections for seven seats, we contested six seats and won four. Earlier we had three seats. For the first time in Bihar we contested elections without the support of JD(U), and despite the fact that the entire JD(U)-RJD and other parties fought together, we have won Bihar. You can clearly see the change. This time we fought against the government in Bihar, whereas earlier we were part of the government when we fought elections. In this way the image of Modi is being tarnished in the entire country,” said Rajya Sabha MP and BJP parliamentary board member P Laxman.
He said: “The Congress candidate in Telangana lost his bail. Overall it is only BJP which has won against all odds. In Telangana we had 12,000 votes (8%), and now we have got 87,000 votes (40%). This is a clear indication that BJP is the only option in the state. Despite Rahul’s India pair visit, they have not won in Telangana,” he said.
Munugode’s results come at a time when the BJP is busy projecting itself as the primary opposition party in Telangana and targeting the Kalvakuntala Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR)-led TRS government over alleged misgovernance and corruption in the state.
Before the result of the by-election, there was a fierce clash between the two parties over an MLA. illegal hunting Conflict.
In Maharashtra, the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) won its first election after a split in the Sena earlier this year, following which the Eknath Shinde-led rebel faction joined hands with the BJP. The BJP pulled out of the bypolls at the last minute in what could possibly be the first electoral battle of strength between the Uddhav Thackeray-led faction of the BJP and the Shiv Sena. The fight for the Andheri East seat was marred by the untimely death of Shiv Sena MLA Ramesh Latke and his wife, who was fielded from the seat by Uddhav Thackeray.
In Odisha’s Dhamnagar, the BJP retained the seat, after the election became necessary following the death of MLA Vishnu Charan Sethi. Sethi’s son Suryavanshi Suraj had contested the election on a BJP ticket. BJP’s Suryavanshi Suraj got 80,351 votes, while BJD’s Abanti Das got 70,470 votes.
Sunday’s victory will certainly strengthen the party’s confidence after its defeat in the panchayat polls held earlier this year. Out of 852 Zilla Parishad Zone ElectionThe BJD had won 766 seats, while the BJP had won only 42 and the Congress 37.
(Edited by Polomi Banerjee)
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