New Delhi, July 13: In one of the biggest jolts to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s NDA that returned to power at the centre just a month ago, the Congress led opposition INDIA bloc has swept the latest by-elections in seven states that took place on Wednesday, winning ten of 13 assembly seats. The BJP barely scraped through with two seats.
The Trinamool Congress swept all four seats in Bengal, the Congress won four- two seats each in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, DMK won one seat, and AAP captured the Jalandhar West assembly seat.
The opposition INDIA bloc looked set to rout the ruling NDA by winning ten of the 13 seats where by-elections were held earlier this week. The BJP, which had the rude shock of failing to clear the majority mark in last month’s Lok Sabha elections, went home with two assembly seats.
Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress swept the Bengal by-polls, winning all four seats by a landslide. In Himachal Pradesh, Congress clinched two of the three seats up for grabs, with Chief Minister Sukhvinder Sukhu’s wife Kamlesh Thakur emerging as a giant slayer in Dehra. In Uttarakhand, Congress was able to grab both Badrinath and Manglaur assembly seats. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which rules in Punjab, secured the Jalandhar West constituency in a three-cornered contest. In Tamil Nadu, its ally the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) secured Vikravandi assembly constituency.
The counting of votes began at 8 am at key constituencies in West Bengal, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, and Bihar.
In Punjab’s Jalandhar West seat, AAP’s Mohinder Bhagat defeated his nearest rival and Congress nominee Surinder Kaur by 37,325 votes. Bypolls were announced in the constituency after Sheetal Angural, the AAP legislator, jumped ship to the BJP. The BJP was relegated to third place.
On its home turf of Himachal Pradesh, the Congress put up a strong show in all three seats that went to the by-polls. Chief Minister Sukhvinder Sukhu congratulated his wife Kamlesh Thakur for her win in Dehra. Thakur beat her nearest rival, BJP’s Hoshiyar Singh, by a margin of 9,399 votes.
In Nalagarh assembly seat, Hardeep Singh Bawa of the Congress defeated BJP’s KL Thakur by 8,990 votes.
In the Hamirpur seat, BJP candidate Ashish Sharma narrowly beat Congress’s Pushpinder Verma by a margin of only 1,571 votes. All three BJP candidates used to be independent legislators, who resigned from the Himachal assembly after voting for the saffron party in the Rajya Sabha polls earlier this year.
In West Bengal, where four seats were up for grabs, Trinamool Congress’s Madhupurna Thakur, Mukut Mani Adhikari, Krishna Kalyani, and Supti Pandey won by a landslide in Bagda, Ranaghat, Raiganj, and Maniktala assembly seats, respectively. Madhuparna (25), the daughter of Trinamool’s Rajya Sabha MP Mamatabala Thakur, is set to be the youngest member of the Bengal assembly.
In the state of Uttarakhand where by-election took place in Manglaur assembly seat, it was a close call as the Congress candidate Qazi Nizamuddin defeated BJP nominee Kartar Singh Bhadana by a margin of only 422 votes. The constituency had witnessed violence on the day of polling.
In the famous temple town of Badrinath, the Congress shocked the BJP when its candidate and a newcomer Lakhpat Singh Butola defeated BJP’s Rajendra Bhandari by a margin of 5,224 votes.
Down South, the ruling DMK’s candidate Anniyur Siva (alias Sivashanmugam A) won the Vikravandi assembly constituency in Tamil Nadu with a massive margin of 1,24,053 votes. He defeated C Anbumani and Naam Tamilar Katchi’s K Abinaya. It was another failed attempt by the BJP to open its account in the southern state.
There was more shock in store for the NDA alliance in Bihar, with its partner and chief minister Nitesh Kumar’s JD(U) getting trounced by an Independent. The JD (U) candidate Kaladhar Prasad Mandal was defeated by independent Shankar Singh in the Rupauli assembly seat by a comfortable margin of 8,246 votes. The by-poll was necessitated by the resignation of sitting MLA Bima Bharti, who quit the JD(U) to contest the Lok Sabha elections on an RJD ticket.
The solace for the BJP was in Madhya Pradesh’s Amarwara constituency in Chhindwara district where its candidate Kamlesh Pratap Shah defeated Congress’ Dheeran Shah Invati by a margin of 3,027 votes. The seat fell vacant after three-time Congress MLA Kamlesh Shah switched to the BJP in March. The outcome is being closely watched, as Chhindwara was considered a stronghold of senior Congress leader Kamal Nath until recently.
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