New Delhi: Results of thirteen assembly bypolls across seven states Saturday brought cheer to the Opposition camp, with INDIA bloc bagging 10 seats, including two each by the Congress in Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh where the party was routed in the Lok Sabha polls, while the BJP registered wins in only two seats, having contested as many as 11.
In West Bengal, the BJP suffered yet another jolt, as the party lost all four seats where voting was held on 10 July, including three it had won in the 2021 assembly polls, to the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC).
Two independent MLAs who switched over to the BJP in Himachal Pradesh also bit the dust, clearing the cloud of doubt that hung over the Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu-led Congress government in the state.
A win in Madhya Pradesh’s Amarwara, which comes under the Chhindwara Lok Sabha constituency dominated by Congress’s Kamal Nath for decades until his son Nakul Nath lost to the BJP in this general election, came as the only salve for the BJP in an otherwise disappointing day for the party.
While local factors determined the outcome of the bypolls, the impressive performance of the INDIA bloc parties in various parts of the country will further diminish the aura of political invincibility that the BJP had come to enjoy for the better part of the past decade under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
It will also place the INDIA bloc at an advantageous position in the game of perception ahead of the next round of state assembly elections to be held later this year in Haryana, Maharashtra and Jharkhand.
Important to note, though, is that INDIA bloc parties had no pre-poll arrangement in place for the assembly bypolls in Punjab and West Bengal.
The BJP had contested all assembly bypolls but Vikravandi in Tamil Nadu and Bihar’s Rupauli, won by the DMK and an independent candidate respectively. While the party had sitting MLAs in only three of the seats that saw bypolls, all three candidates fielded by the party in Himachal Pradesh had won as independents in the 2022 assembly elections.
In Uttarakhand’s Badrinath seat, BJP fielded Rajendra Singh Bhandari, who won as a Congress candidate in the 2022 assembly elections and joined the BJP during the Lok Sabha polls. Bhandari lost the seat to Congress’s Lakhapat Singh Butola by a margin of 5,224 votes.
The Congress victory in Badrinath is also significant as it is home to one of the Char Dham shrines, considered sacred by devout Hindus. It will rankle the BJP as the Opposition will use every opportunity to remind the ruling party that it is the second seat, after Faizabad Lok Sabha seat under which Ayodhya falls, that is home to a Hindu pilgrimage site that the party failed to win.
कांग्रेस प्रत्याशी श्री लखपत सिंह बुटोला जी को बद्रीनाथ विधानसभा सीट से इस शानदार जीत के लिए हार्दिक बधाई एवं शुभकामनाएं।।
आखिर संघर्ष काम आया
जनता ने कांग्रेस का साथ दिया
आप सभी का सहृदय आभार।। pic.twitter.com/p0Ytpe108B
— Uttarakhand Congress (@INCUttarakhand) July 13, 2024
In a statement, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said the party’s victories show that the people have rejected the BJP’s “arrogance, misgovernance and negative politics” and are indicative of the “falling graph of Modi and Shah”. Congress general secretary (communications) Jairam Ramesh said that the results were reflective of the “significant recovery” of the party and the “changing political climate” in the country.
“In Himachal Pradesh, all the machinations of the BJP have failed miserably. The Congress has won 2 of the assembly seats held by Independents who had been lured away as part of Operation Lotus. (In Uttarakhand), Manglaur was wrested from the BSP and in the face of dirty tactics by the BJP. In Badrinath, the sitting MLA was a Congressman who had switched to the BJP during the Lok Sabha polls. He has been rightly punished by the people and the Congress has held on to the seat,” Ramesh wrote on X.
For Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, the Congress’s performance in the bypolls, particularly the victory of wife Kamlesh Thakur from the Dehra assembly seat that the party never won in the past, will come as a boost, after the drubbing in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha polls earlier this year.
In the bypolls to six seats held previously with the Lok Sabha election, the Congress had won four. With the current set of victories, the Sukhu government will now enjoy a comfortable majority of 40 seats in the 68-member state legislative assembly.
In neighbouring Punjab, the AAP’s victory in Jalandhar West assembly seat will lift the party’s morale at a time it is facing a major crisis with its top leaders including Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal in jail.
A bypoll in this seat was necessitated after sitting AAP MLA Sheetal Angural defected to the BJP. Angural has now suffered a resounding defeat as the BJP candidate. The AAP’s victory is also a vindication of Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann’s leadership who had taken upon himself to win the bypoll and even camped in Jalandhar for as many as 20 days.
In West Bengal, by drawing a blank, the crisis in the state unit of the BJP has further deepened. Three of the four seats — Ranaghat Dakshin, Bagda and Raiganj — were won by the BJP in the 2021 assembly polls. The TMC has wrested all three from the BJP, while also retaining the Maniktala seat which falls under the state capital Kolkata.
In Bihar’s Rupauli, independent candidate Shankar Singh trounced the JD(U), which held the seat, and the RJD. For outgoing MLA Bima Bharti, who had switched to the RJD from the JD(U), it is her second straight loss in less than two months. She lost the Lok Sabha election from Purnea.
Pappu Yadav, who won as an independent candidate from Purnea, had criticised RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav for fielding Bharti from the seat, saying it was reflective of his “arrogance” for which the INDIA bloc had to “pay the price” across the state in the Lok Sabha elections.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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