Results of bypolls in five Assembly and one Lok Sabha constituencies across three states and one Union Territory have come as a morale booster for the Bharatiya Janata Party that has been grappling with the Opposition’s protests over the Special Intensive Revision.
These results are not a verdict on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government at the Centre. They don’t reflect the national mood, nor do they give an inkling of what people may be thinking in the five states that will go to the polls next February-March. These bypolls don’t even answer whether Rahul Gandhi’s sudden transformation from social media warrior to street fighter would translate into votes for the Congress. Bypolls are highly localised, and usually favour the ruling party. It becomes a matter of worry when the ruling party loses a bypoll—in Bihar’s Bankipur, for instance. The four chief ministers—C Joseph Vijay of Tamil Nadu, Suvendu Adhikari of West Bengal, Himanta Biswa Sarma of Assam, and N Rangasamy of Puducherry—therefore, must be relieved and cheerful on Friday.
The results are, however, a setback to the Opposition, especially the Congress and the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC). Their spirited protests over the so-called ‘vote theft’ in the national capital aren’t influencing people’s voting behaviour—at least, not yet.
Where Opposition lost—and how much
The Congress received a big blow in Assam’s Nagaon Lok Sabha constituency, which the party had won by over 2 lakh votes in 2024. The Muslim-majority seat fell vacant after Congress MP Pradyut Bordoloi quit the party, resigned from the Lok Sabha, and joined the BJP. On Friday, the Congress came third, with its vote share plummeting to around 9 per cent now from 51 per cent in 2024. The party had secured 7.89 lakh votes in 2024, which came down to about 1.29 lakh on Friday. What must hurt the Congress more is that most of these voters chose Badruddin Ajmal of the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF). Against 1.37 lakh votes that the AIUDF candidate got in 2024, Ajmal secured 5.68 lakh votes on Friday.
The BJP candidate, Devasish Sharma, received over 7 lakh votes. It’s the Congress that has lost out.
AITC chief Mamata Banerjee, who has been vociferously alleging ‘vote theft’ in the last West Bengal Assembly elections, also got a shocker in the Assembly bypolls. The BJP winning the Nandigram seat vacated by CM Adhikari was expected, but the vote share of the joint Opposition candidate (the Congress candidate backed by the AITC) witnessed a massive decline—from 46.55 per cent in the Assembly elections six months ago (AITC candidate) to 19.25 per cent now (Congress).
The bigger blow to Banerjee came in Rejinagar, where Muslims constitute around 70 per cent of the population. It’s not that the BJP managed to win the Muslim-majority seat with a 63.14 per cent vote share. The seat had anyway been won by former AITC leader Humayun Kabir, who founded the Aam Janata Unnayan Party (AJUP), in the last Assembly election. His son lost to the BJP candidate on Friday. What must come as a shocker to Banerjee is a further erosion of the AITC’s vote share in this Muslim-dominated seat—from 17.43 per cent six months ago to 1.87 per cent now.
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Decoding the results
Given that Muslims are said to be the most aggrieved by the SIR, they could have been expected to rally around the Congress and the AITC in the bypolls, especially when the polling happened amid vociferous protests against the SIR by these parties in the national capital. The opposite happened instead. Even the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), which has been attributing its defeat in the last Tamil Nadu Assembly elections to the SIR, saw a marginal decline in its vote share in the Dharapuram Assembly bypoll—from 32.20 per cent to 31.52 per cent. In Madurantakam bypoll, too, the DMK’s vote share decreased from 31.32 per cent six months ago to about 29.15 per cent now.
It would be imprudent to see the results of the bypolls as a national verdict on the Opposition’s campaign over so-called ‘vote theft’. These results do, however, suggest that the issue is still not central to voting choices, as we witnessed earlier in Bihar.
Do the bypolls’ results reflect the electoral impact of Gen Z protests? Not really. In Tamil Nadu, actor-turned-politician Vijay rode on Gen Z’s support to power in May. His party’s impressive victories in the two Assembly bypolls with greater vote shares suggest his abiding popularity among Gen Z.
As for the bypolls in West Bengal and Assam, these places had remained relatively unaffected by Gen Z protests in June-July, unlike Bankipur in Patna, which had witnessed strong agitations. One can argue that the issues over which students and youth had come out on the roads to protest in major cities should have resonated among Gen Z everywhere, because education and jobs concern everyone.
There are two ways one can explain the discrepancy. First, once Dharmendra Pradhan resigned as education minister and a high-powered task force on education reforms was formed under Nandan Nilekani, the youth didn’t see the need to proactively vote in bypolls to make their voice heard. Second, while they might be agitated over the state of affairs and appreciate Gandhi joining their cause, students likely don’t see an alternative in mainstream parties yet. An indication of whether they are as concerned about the SIR and the alleged vote theft as they are about their education and jobs will probably come from the way they respond to the call for protests by the Cockroach Janta Party and students’ organisations on Saturday.
DK Singh is Political Editor at ThePrint. He tweets @dksingh73. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)