By-Elections: BJP Does Well in North-east, the Congress in North, TMC Sweeps West Bengal

Manas Dasgupta

NEW DELHI, Nov 2: Though the results of the by-elections for 30 Assembly constituencies in different states have by and large gone with the respective ruling parties, the Congress badly-battered in the recent elections can take solace from sweeping all the three Assembly and one Lok Sabha seat in Himachal Pradesh and winning both the seats in Rajasthan.

The ruling BJP continued to perform well in the north-east having captured all the five seats in Assam along with its ally UPPL and claimed three seats in Madhya Pradesh but suffered major setbacks in HP, Haryana and West Bengal where its candidates even lost deposits in three of the four seats with the Trinamool Congress of the chief minister Mamata Banerjee expectedly taking all the four seats.

In the by-elections for the three Lok Sabha seats, the Congress is all set to register an upset win over the BJP in Mandi in HP, while the is BJP likely to retain Khandwa in MP and the Shiv Sena has taken the winning lead in union territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli. The bypolls were held on October 30 and the counting of votes taken up on Tuesday.

The Trinamool Congress has swept all four assembly seats in West Bengal but Dinhata which BJP had won in the April-May elections this year, the TMC’s Udayan Guha won by a record, margin of over 1.63 lakh votes with the CPM, which along with the Congress was swept out of the state Assembly then, coming up his nearest rival with the BJP dropping down to third place and losing deposit. Similarly, candidate Subrata Mondal clinched the Gosaba assembly seat by a massive margin of 1,43,051 votes. TMC also won in the Khardah and Santipur assembly segments by a margin of 93,832 and 64,675 votes, respectively.

In a heart-warming performance, the Congress party swept the Himachal and Rajasthan by-polls. Despite the “double-engine” BJP campaign by the state chief minister Jairam Thakur and the union minister Anurag Thakur, the Congress won all three assembly seats in Himachal Pradesh — Fatehpur, Arki and Jubbal-Kotkhai besides the Mandi Lok Sabha seat. In Rajasthan where the Congress is ruling, the party has won both the Dhariawad and Vallabhnagar Assembly seats further strengthening the hands of the chief minister Ashok Gehlot facing challenges from his former deputy Sachin Pilot. In Maharashtra too, the Congress’s Jitesh Antapurkar is close to comfortably bagging the keenly fought Deglur assembly bypoll, leading by 39,400 votes over BJP’s Subhash Sabane. The bypoll was necessitated by his father Raosaheb Antapurkar’s death.

The Congress also reclaimed Madhya Pradesh’s Raigaon, a traditional BJP seat, after 31 years. However, the BJP clinched Jobat, a scheduled tribe reserved seat, and Prithvipur assembly seat and was leading in the Khandwa Lok Sabha seat. The BJP and its ally UPPL have claimed victory in all five assembly seats in Assam. The BJP also wrested Telangana’s Huzurabad from the ruling TRS.

In Bihar, the JD(U) of the chief minister Nitish Kumar giving good account of performance of his government in alliance with the BJP, won both the Kusheshwar Asthan and Tarapur assembly seats trouncing the rival Rashtriya Janata Dal of former union minister Lalu Prasad Yadav further widening the party’s rift with the Congress which refused to maintain its electoral alliance and fielded its candidates against the RLD at both the seats.

For the first time, the Shiv Sena stepped out of Maharashtra winning the Dadra and Nagar Haveli Lok Sabha seat with MP Sanjay Raut calling it a “giant leap towards Delhi.” The NPP-led Meghalaya Democratic Alliance clinched all three assembly seats, wresting Rajabala and Mawryngkneng seats from the Congress.

In Karnataka, the BJP and the Congress won one seats each causing a setback to the newly-appointed chief minister Basavraj Bommai form whom it was the first electoral battle since assuming power a few months back in place of the veteran leader BS Yediyurappa. Particularly the BJP defeat at his home constituency of Hanagal has put a question mark on Bommai’s leadership. Bommai, along with at least 20 BJP ministers and MLAs, camped in Hanagal for several days and campaigned which clearly showed that a win there was crucial for the chief minister.

In Andhra Pradesh’s Badvel, the ruling YSR Congress Party comfortably retained the seat. YSRCP candidate Dr D Sudha polled over 1,12,211 votes—over 77 per cent of the total votes, while BJP’s P Suresh got 21,678 votes and Congress got less than 700 votes

Invigorated by the victory in the bypolls to all three Assembly segments and the Mandi Lok Sabha seat, the opposition Congress in HP, which is going to the polls next year, demanded Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur’s resignation while the BJP said it would introspect the causes of its defeat. The HP Congress chief Kuldeep Singh Rathore said “Thakur even failed to retain the BJP’s seat in his home district Mandi.” He described the bypolls as “semifinal” and exuded confidence that the Congress would win the Assembly elections scheduled for December next year. On the other hand, CM Thakur alleged that some BJP workers operated against the party candidates. “Action will be taken against them,” he said.

In West Bengal, the BJP blamed the “misuse” of the state machinery for the party’s dismal performance in the bypolls and the TMC’s victory. The state BJP leader Dilip Ghosh alleged that voting in the eastern state was performed by the police and not by the people in a one-sided manner. The BJP, however, refused to explain if the party was adopting a similar measure in states like Assam where it had swept the bypolls.