By-polls: TMC in Bengal, RJD in Bihar, Congress in Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra, no seat for BJP

Vibha Sharma

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 16

The BJP today lost by-elections to one Lok Sabha—Asansol—and four Assembly seats — Ballygunge (Bengal), Khairagarh (Chhattisgarh), Bochachan (Bihar) and Kolhapur north (Maharashtra). While rival RJD registered a landslide victory in Bochahan (Bihar), predicting a change in power in the state ruled by JD-U-BJP combine, the Congress won two Assembly seats in Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra.

“Congratulations to all of you for a massive victory against the divisive policies of Narendra Modi and the massive corrupt policies of weary chief minister of a party at  number 3 (JD-U).The day is not far when Tejashwi Yadav will take charge of the state,” RJD tweeted.

Thanking the people of Bochahan for defeating an “opportunist NDA coalition government”, Yadav said “the RJD raised issues of unemployment, inflation, collapsed education, health, agriculture and the law and order situation in its campaign.”

Meanwhile in Bengal, the TMC won both the Lok Sabha and the Assembly with massive margins. TMC candidate, actor-turned-politician Shatrughan Sinha defeated BJP’s Agnimitra Paul in Asansol, thereby bringing down the BJP tally in the Lok Sabha by one seat. Singer-turned-politician Babul Supriyo, who quit the BJP to join Mamata Banerjee-led TMC, won Ballygunge.

A star-face of the BJP, Sinha was a union minister in the erstwhile Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. Upset over being “sidelined” in the regime of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Sinha became his bitter critic and contested the 2019 general elections from Patna Sahib on a Congress ticket and lost.

Asansol was vacated by Supriyo who quit the BJP last year to join the TMC.

The ruling Congress in Chhattisgarh won Khairagarh in the fourth by-poll victory since 2018 with Yashoda Verma defeating BJP’s Komal Janghel. The party had promised to make Khairagarh a district if it wins the seat, which is believed to be one of the reasons behind the victory.

However, the win does in a way set the tone for the next year’s assembly polls in Chhattisgarh. The ruling party had won all the three by-elections held after it came to power in the 2018 assembly elections.

In Maharashtra the ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) got a leg-up with the Congress’s Jayashri Jadhav defeating BJP’s Satyajeet Kadam, again with a good margin.