Assembly bypolls: In landslide victory, INDIA bloc wins 10 of 13 seats across 7 states; BJP bags 2, Independent 1

New Delhi, July 13

In a boost to the INDIA bloc, its constituents won 10 of the 13 Assembly seats where by-elections were held in seven states, while the BJP managed to bag two and an Independent pocketed one seat as votes were counted on Saturday.

The Congress won four seats — two in BJP-ruled Uttarakhand and two in Himachal Pradesh. The TMC bagged all the four seats in West Bengal, while the AAP won the Jalandhar West seat in Punjab and the DMK emerged victorious in the Vikravandi constituency in Tamil Nadu.

The BJP won the Hamirpur seat in Himachal Pradesh, while Independent candidate Shankar Singh clinched the Rupauli seat in Bihar.

Voting was held in these seats on July 10.

The Congress hailed the results, saying they “reflect the changing political climate in the country” and it has now become clear that the web of “fear and illusion woven by the BJP has been broken”.

West Bengal Chief Minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee thanked the people and said the party will dedicate the by-election and the Lok Sabha poll victories to the “martyrs” on its July 21 Martyrs’ Day rally.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin referred to the INDIA bloc’s good show and said BJP should learn lessons from its defeats.

“BJP must realise that without respecting regional sentiments it cannot run the government and the party,” he said. He described his party’s victory as people’s “thanksgiving” to DMK regime’s welfare schemes.

Hailing the victory in Madhya Pradesh, Chief Minister Mohan Yadav said the people have reposed their faith in the BJP government’s “guarantee of trust”.

In Uttarakhand, Congress’s Qazi Mohammad Nizamuddin won the Manglaur seat for the fourth time edging out BJP’s Kartar Singh Bhadana by a narrow margin of 422 votes. Nizamuddin won the seat twice on a BSP ticket and once on a Congress ticket in the past.

The BSP, which had won the seat in the 2022 assembly polls, was relegated to the third position.

In Badrinath, Congress’s Lakhapat Butola, a first-time contestant, scored an upset victory over former minister and MLA Rajendra Bhandari of the BJP whose resignation as a legislator just before the Lok Sabha polls had necessitated the bypoll. Butola’s victory margin was 5,224 votes.

Congress candidate Kamlesh Thakur, wife of Himachal Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, defeated BJP’s Hoshiyar Singh to win the Dehra seat by a margin of 9,399 votes. Hardeep Singh Bawa also defeated his nearest rival and BJP candidate K L Thakur in Nalagarh by 8,990 votes. Bawa is a five-time Indian National Trade Union Congress president.

BJP’s Ashish Sharma, however, managed to win the Hamirpur seat defeating Congress candidate Pushpinder Verma.

The Congress’s strength in the 68-member assembly had dropped from 40 to 34 after six of its MLAs joined the BJP. It has now regained the tally it secured in the assembly elections in 2022, after winning four seats in bypolls—held along with the Lok Sabha elections in June—and two more it won on Saturday.

The bypoll results ensured that for the first time in the electoral history of the state, a husband and wife—Sukhvinder Sukhu and Kamlesh Thakur—would be members of the Himachal Pradesh assembly. In another first, there will not be a single Independent MLA in the assembly.

In the 2022 Assembly elections, three Independents namely Hoshiyar Singh (Dehra), Ashish Sharma (Hamirpur) and K L Thakur (Nalagarh) were elected but they resigned after voting for BJP candidate Harsh Mahajan in the Rajya Sabha election on February 27. They joined the BJP due to which the seats fell vacant.

Himachal Pradesh BJP chief Rajeev Bindal alleged Sukhu spent crores of rupees for the by-elections and involved the entire state government in the poll campaign but still lost in his home district Hamirpur.

He also alleged that the Congress won the two seats by “threatening people, tempting them and misusing” the government machinery.

The Trinamool Congress continued its winning streak from the recent Lok Sabha elections by sweeping the West Bengal bypolls, wresting Raiganj, Bagda and Ranaghat Dakshin seats from the BJP and securing a record victory margin in Maniktala.

TMC candidates Krishna Kalyani, Madhuparna Thakur and Mukut Mani Adhikari won the Raiganj, Bagda, and Ranaghat Dakshin seats respectively, while Supti Pandey won Maniktala in North Kolkata.

In Punjab, Mohinder Bhagat of the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) won the Jalandhar West seat by defeating BJP nominee Sheetal Angural by a margin of 37,325 votes. The seat fell vacant after Angural resigned as the AAP legislator and joined the BJP in March.

Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann said the victory shows that the people of the state are “very happy” with his government’s work.

In Tamil Nadu, the ruling DMK’s Anniyur Siva emerged victorious in the Vikravandi assembly constituency, defeating NDA constituent PMK’s Ambumani C by 67,757 votes.

In Madhya Pradesh, BJP’s Kamlesh Pratap Shah won the Amarwara assembly seat by a margin of 3,027 votes against Congress’s Dheeran Sah Invati, while in Bihar, Independent candidate Shankar Singh won the Rupauli seat, defeating JD(U)’s Kaladhar Prasad Mandal by 8,246 votes.