E-Paper
BJP wins 4 key bypolls; TRS secures T’gana seat
The results of the bypolls, held on November 3, reinforced the BJP’s strength in the Hindi heartland as it retained three seats
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won four of seven assembly constituencies across six states as results of recently held bypolls were declared on Sunday, even as the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) secured a seat after a close fight with the BJP.
The results of the bypolls, held on November 3, reinforced the BJP’s strength in the Hindi heartland as it retained three seats, while the Uddhav Thackeray-led faction of the Shiv Sena also bagged one seat. The Congress appeared to continue its downslide, losing two seats earlier held by the party.
The ruling TRS wrested the Munugode assembly seat from the Congress. TRS candidate Kusukuntla Prabhakar Reddy defeated the BJP’s Komatireddy Rajagopal Reddy by a margin of about 10,000 votes in the keenly fought contest. Rajagopal Reddy, the sitting MLA, had resigned from the state assembly after joining the BJP following his exit from the Congress.
The BJP said the results of the November 3 by-elections were a stamp of approval by people on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s policies as it retained Gola Gokarannath in Uttar Pradesh, Dhamnagar in Odisha and Gopalganj in Bihar where it had fielded the kin of its party MLAs whose death necessitated the polls.
Congress candidate Palwai Sravanthi, daughter of former minister late Palwai Govardhan Reddy, who represented the Munugode constituency five times in the past, got 23,906 votes (10.06%) and lost her deposit.
In Bihar, the BJP retained the Gopalganj assembly seat and the RJD won Mokama. Gopalganj had a nail-biting finish, with Kusum Devi of the BJP defeating Mohan Kumar Gupta of the RJD by a slender margin of 1,794 votes. Devi’s husband, Subhash Singh, was the MLA from there since 2005, and the election was necessitated after his death.
In Mokama, gangster-turned-politician Anant Singh’s wife Neelam Devi defeated the BJP’s Sonam Devi, wife of a strongman Lalan Singh, by a margin of 16,741 votes. Sitting MLA Anant Singh was disqualified following his conviction in a criminal case. However, the RJD’s winning margin shrunk; Singh won the last election by a margin of 35,757 votes. Neelam got 79,744 votes, while Devi secured 63,003 votes.
In Andheri East, Rutuja Latke, the candidate of the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), the faction led by Uddhav, recorded a victory. The BJP did not put up a candidate against her as she was contesting from the seat where her late husband, Ramesh Latke, was the sitting MLA. She won by 66,530 votes and None Of The Above (NOTA) got 12,776 votes, the second highest. “If the BJP had any sympathy, they would not have filled the (nomination) form earlier… A survey was conducted before the election and they knew that they were losing hence they withdrew the nomination of their candidate,” Latke said.
In Uttar Pradesh’s Gola bypoll, BJP candidate Aman Giri defeated Vinay Tiwari of the Samajwadi Party (SP) by a margin of 34,298 votes, retaining the seat of his father and the late BJP MLA Arvind Giri. The winning margin of Aman was bigger than that of his father, who had won the seat in March this year.
In Odisha’s Dhamnagar, the BJP’s 27-year-old candidate Suryabanshi Suraj defeated BJD candidate Abanti Das by 9,881 votes. Suraj, son of late BJP MLA Bishnu Charan Sethi, whose death in September this year necessitated the bypoll, polled 80,351 votes, while Das secured 70,470 votes. At 27 years, Suryabanshi Suraj is the youngest MLA in the current state assembly. “Bypoll result reflects the mood of people in Odisha as well as Odisha’s trust on the decisive and credible leadership of Hon. PM @narendramodi ji,” tweeted Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan after the results were declared.
In Adampur in Haryana, BJP candidate Bhavya Bishnoi won by defeating his nearest rival, Congress veteran Jai Parkash, by over 15,000 votes. The seat was vacated by his father Kuldeep Bishnoi after he joined the BJP from the Congress. Of the total 131,401 votes polled, Bhavya secured 67,492 (51.32%), while Jai Parkash, former three-time member of Parliament from Hisar, polled 51,752 votes to finish second.
INLD candidate Kurda Ram Nambardar secured 5,248 votes and the Aam Aadmi Party’s candidate got 3,420 votes.
“In a way, it is a big gain for the BJP in Munugode, given the fact that the party has a very little presence in Nalgonda district, dominated by the Congress and the Communists in the past and the TRS at present. However, this big jump in the BJP vote share can be attributed to Rajagopal Reddy’s personal image and popularity,” political analyst Rama Krishna Sangem said. He added that the result showed that the BJP is now the only alternative to the TRS in the next assembly elections, as the Congress was relegated to the third position.
