Sunday, 14 JULY 2024 | PNS | DEHRADUN
Reversing the trend of candidates belonging to the ruling party emerging victorious in the by-elections in Uttarakhand, the Congress bagged both Badrinath and Manglaur Assembly seats, the by-election for which was held on July 10. In Badrinath, Congress candidate Lakhpat Singh Butola defeated local heavyweight and BJP candidate Rajendra Singh Bhandari by a margin of 5,224 votes. The by-election was necessitated by the resignation of MLA Bhandari from the State Assembly and Congress party before the recent Lok Sabha elections. Butola bagged 28,161 votes while Bhandari could secure 22,937 votes. In Badrinath the Congress candidate started on a positive note from the first round of the counting and maintained the lead till the end of the counting spread over 15 rounds.
In the high stake Manglaur by- election, Qazi Nizamuddin of Congress defeated his nearest rival Kartar Singh Bhadana of BJP by a margin of 422 votes in a close contest. Though Nizamuddin was ahead in the early phase of the counting and at one point he led by about 8,000 votes, from the seventh round BJP candidate Kartar Singh Bhadana reduced the lead and after nine rounds, the Congress candidate was ahead by only 93 votes. However in the tenth round Nizamuddin bagged 1,537 votes against 1,181 received by Bhadana to register a narrow victory.
The victory of the Congress candidates in these bypolls assumes significance because the candidates of ruling party have won 13 out of 14 Assembly by-elections held in the State before these two by-elections after creation of Uttarakhand. The only time the candidate other than ruling party registered victory was in the by-election of Dwarahat held in the year 2005. The by-election was held due to the death of incumbent MLA Bipin Tripathi of Uttarakhand Kranti Dal (UKD) and his son Pushpesh Tripathi won the seat as UKD candidate during the regime of chief minister Narayan Dutt Tiwari of the Congress party.
