Results for the bypolls of five assembly constituencies (AC) and one Lok Sabha constituency were declared on Friday by the Election Commission of India. The elections were held on two ACs each in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu and one AC in Puducherry. The lone Lok Sabha election was held in Assam. The ruling party in each state has won the bypolls, which is in keeping with the wider trend around bypoll results. This intuitive development aside, are there any
- TVK has consolidated its position in Tamil Nadu at the cost of the AIADMKThe two ACs which went to polls in Tamil Nadu were Dharapuram and Maduranthakam. The All India Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) won both these ACs in the elections which were held in May. The bypolls were held because both AIADMK members resigned. The ruling party (Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam) TVK has won both these ACs. It had finished third and second in these ACs when elections were held in May. TVK’s vote share has increased by 13.8 and 8.64 percentage points in Dharapuram and Maduranthakam compared to May. Almost all of these gains seem to have come at the AIADMK’s cost, whose vote share has fallen by 15.4 percentage points in Dharapuram and 9.6 percentage points in Maduranthakam. However, its latest vote share – 37% in Dharapuram and 40% in Maduranthakam – is not something which appears as overwhelming support for a party which has just captured power. The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s (DMK) vote share changed little between the two elections, falling from 32.2% to 31.8% in Dharapuram and from 30.2% to 29.1% in Maduranthakam. The bypoll results also suggest that if the TVK continues to grow at the cost of the AIADMK, it might continue to remain ahead of the DMK despite the latter retaining its 2026 May election support levels.
- BJP is miles ahead of its opponents in West BengalWest Bengal saw bypolls in Nandigram and Rejinagar ACs. The former was vacated by chief minister Suvendu Adhikari who chose to retain Bhabanipur and the latter by Humayun Kabir who had won from two ACs in the assembly elections held in May. While the BJP won the Nandigram AC in both 2021 and 2026 assembly elections, it has won the election with a massive vote share of 76% this time. In Rejinagar, which is located in Muslim majority Murshidabad district, and which had never elected a non-Muslim MLA since the 2011 assembly elections in West Bengal – the earliest period for which AC boundaries can be compared – the BJP’s victory is a clear indication that even a Muslim majority AC might have seen votes being polled in favour of the BJP. What is also interesting in the West Bengal results is that the Trinamool Congress (TMC), which ruled the state from 2011-2026 did not even finish as a runner-up in the two ACs. In Nandigram, its candidate withdrew from the polls and it announced support for a Congress candidate. In Rejinagar, both factions of the TMC contested but finished a distant fourth and sixth.
- Yet another Congress collapse in AssamCongress had won the Nagaon Lok Sabha in 2024 and 2019 elections with a vote share of 50.9% and 49.5%. It has polled just 9% vote share in this bypoll. This is a significant deterioration even when compared to the Congress’s performance in the 2026 assembly elections held in May when its combined vote share in the eight ACs which constitute this Lok Sabha was 38% and 48.7% if one includes the votes polled by its allies Assam Jatiya Parishad and Raijor Dal that contested two of those eight ACs.. The BJP’s vote share in the bypoll, on the other hand is not very different from how it performed in the assembly elections held earlier this year. What had really hurt the Congress in the Nagaon bypoll is the resurrection of the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) led by Badruddin Ajmal, which has polled 38.5% votes in this latest election. AIUDF’s vote share in the 2024 Lok Sabha election and the 2026 assembly election in this constituency was , 8.9 and 15.1 respectively. Because the AIDUF primarily draws its support from Muslims, the larger question the bypoll results raise is whether the Congress stands the risk of even losing its Muslim support in Assam?
Nishant Ranjan has been working as a data journalist with Hindustan Times since 2023. In this short period, he has established a niche for creating original datasets and utilising them to produce journalistic work that pushes the boundaries of journalism. The list of datasets and stories done by him include the following: a dataset of all 717 chief ministers India has had since 1952, a dataset of all 3,350 members of India’s council of ministers, a dataset of all 190 deputy chief ministers in India and a dataset of all 279 Supreme Court judges in India (1950-2025). He has also profiled each elected Muslim MLA/MP since 1952. He is a mining engineer by training who decided to pursue a Master's in Development Studies from TISS after working in a coal mine for 10 months. He also worked as a research associate at the Centre for Policy Research, researching local governance in India. He also has a keen interest in analyzing electoral politics and political executives in India.
Roshan Kishore is the Data and Political Economy Editor at Hindustan Times. He heads the newsroom's data journalism team, which produces Number Theory, a daily data-driven feature for the print edition and the HT app. Number Theory uses data analysis and story-telling based on it to add value to the newsroom’s daily coverage by putting stories in a larger context on a range of issues, including politics, macroeconomy, markets, global affairs and climate. Under his leadership HT’s data journalism work has established itself as a niche product in Indian journalism and pushed the boundaries of marrying academic rigour with news sense and speed. Along with writing and editing data stories, he has also been writing a weekly political economy column called Terms of Trade for HT Premium. A trained economist with an MPhil degree from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Kishore has also been a visiting fellow at the Centre for Advanced Studies of India (CASI) at the University of Pennsylvania. Along with his journalistic work, his writings have also appeared in journals such as the Economic and Political Weekly and working papers for CASI and UNESCAP.