Wednesday, 03 November 2021 | PNS | New Delhi
Bypoll results in 3 LS, 29 Assembly seats mixed fortune for major parties
The bypolls result in three Lok Sabha and 29 Assembly constituencies spread across 13 States and the Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli on Tuesday delivered mixed fortune for major political parties with the BJP sweeping in Assam and the Congress making a stunning comeback in Himachal Pradesh.
The Trinamool Congress won all four seats, including the Dinhata Assembly seat which its Minister of State for Home Nishith Paramanik had won earlier this year by a record margin of 1,64,089 votes.
The BJP held its own in Madhya Pradesh. The party won two of the three Assembly seats and one Lok Sabha seat while the Congress secured Assembly victory in one constituency.
Of the three Lok Sabha seats where bypolls were held on October 30, the Congress won Mandi, Shiv Sena Dadra, and Nagar Haveli, and BJP retained Khandwa Lok Sabha seat where its candidate Gyaneshwar Patil scored over Congress’ Rajnarayansingh Purni.
The Congress held its sway in Rajasthan winning both the seats, while the BJP and the Congress shared one seat each in Karnataka. The JD(U) won both the seats in Bihar.
The bypoll in Haryana which took place in the wake of farmers’ agitation and the resignation of INLD secretary general Abhay Singh Chautala has gone in the favour of the latter. Chautala has won the Assembly seat against his nearest rival Gobind Kanda of the BJP-JJP combine in the Ellenabad Assembly constituency.
The bypoll was necessitated after Chautala in January resigned as the MLA from the seat in protest against three Central farm laws and to stand in solidarity with the farmers who are protesting against these legislations for more than one year.
The ruling BJP won the Sindgi seat in Karnataka with a margin of 31,185, votes but significantly lost the Hangal Assembly seat which fell in incumbent Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai’s home district of Haveri . Bommai later said he had taken the loss of Hangal seat “very seriously and will take corrective steps”.
In Assam, BJP candidate Sushanta Borgohain, who switched over from the Congress, won the Thowra seat by a margin of 30,561, while UPPL nominee Jiron Basumatary pocketed the Gossaigaon constituency by a margin of 28,252 votes.
BJP candidates Phanidhar Talukdar (Bhabanipur) and Rupjyoti Kurmi (Mariani) won with big margins, while Jolen Daimary of the UPPL won the Tamulpur seat.
With these victories, the BJP’s strength in the 126-member Assam Assembly has increased to 60 and UPPL’s to six. The other partner in the ruling coalition, Asom Gana Parishad, which had not fielded any candidate in the by-elections, has nine MLAs.
The Congress has much to cheer about its show in Himachal which is also the home State of BJP president JP Nadda. Congress candidates Bhawani Singh Pathania, Sanjay, and Rohit Thakur won from Fatehpur, Arki and Jubbal-Kotkhai Assembly constituencies, respectively. State Congress president Kuldeep Singh Rathore demanded the resignation of Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur on moral grounds after the BJP’s defeat.
In Mandi parliamentary seat, late Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh’s wife Pratibha Singh of the Congress won against her nearest rival Kargil war hero Brigadier Khushal Thakur of the BJP. In the last Lok Sabha election in 2019 BJP’s Ram Swaroop Sharma had won the Mandi seat by a whopping 4,05,000 votes.
In West Bengal, BJP suffered an embarrassing defeat at the hands of the ruling Trinamool Congress conceding all the four Assembly seats that went to polls on October 30 by-elections.
The saffron outfit not only lost all the four Assembly seats — including the two it had won in April-May State polls — to the TMC but it also forfeited deposits in all but one seat of Shantipur in Nadia district. Even here the party lost to the Trinamool by a whopping margin of about 64,000 votes.
TMC’s Braja Kishor Goswami won Shantipur defeating his nearest BJP rival Niranjan Das. Shantipur was earlier won by BJP’s Jagannath Sarkar, an MP who later chose to retain his parliamentary seat.
In North Bengal, BJP’s Ashok Mondal lost the Dinhata seat to TMC’s Udayan Guha by a huge margin of 1.64 lakh votes. Dinhata is the home turf of Union Home Minister of State Nisith Pramanik (and Cooch Behar MP) who had contested from the seat in April-May elections defeating Guha by 53 votes before choosing to retain his LS seat.
“How the Home Minister performed is proved by the fact that his party trailed the TMC by 95 votes from his home booth,” said Cooch Behar TMC leader and former Minister RN Ghosh.
Near to Kolkata, the TMC candidate and State Minister Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay won the Khardaha seat in North 24 Parganas by a huge margin of 93,800 votes. He defeated BJP’s Joy Saha.
Further south near the Sunderbans TMC’s Subrata Mondal won the Gosaba Assembly seat defeating BJP’s Palash Rana by a huge margin of 1.97 lakh votes.
In Rajasthan Congress won the Dhariawad and Vallabhnagar Assembly seats which may have come as a comfort to Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot.
In Madhya Pradesh, Sulochana Rawat of the BJP defeated nearest rival Mahesh Rawat Patel of the Congress by a margin of 6,104 votes in Jobat while BJP’s Shishupal Yadav registered victory in Prithvipur, defeating Congress’ Nitendra Singh Rathore by a margin of 15,687 votes.
In Raigon, Kalpana Verma of the Congress defeated BJP rival Pratima Bagri by a margin of 12,290 votes.
In Bihar, Janata Dal (U) won both Kusheshwar Asthan seat and Tarapur Assembly seat.
Aman Bhushan Hajari of JD(U) defeated RJD’s Ganesh Bharti and Congress’s Atirek Kumar in Kusheshwar Asthan reserved seat. Hajari won with a margin of 12,695 votes over Bharti.
In the Tarapur Assembly constituency, JD(U)’s Rajeev Kumar Singh defeated RJD’s Arun Kumar by 3,852 votes.
