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INDIA allies win 4 seats, BJP grabs 3 in assembly bypolls
In West Bengal, the TMC snatched the Dhupguri seat from the BJP by a thin margin of 4,313 votes. The Congress had also put up a candidate who came third.
Members of the INDIA bloc won four and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) picked up three seats on Friday in assembly bypolls spread across six states in what was the first electoral exercise after 28 Opposition parties came together on a common platform to fight the 2024 general elections.
Also Read| Victory of INDIA team: Mamata Banerjee after TMC wrests Dhupguri seat from BJP
The BJP won two seats, Boxanagar and Dhanpur, in Tripura, wresting the former from the Left, and retained the Bageshwar seat in Uttarakhand. The Congress retained Puthuppally in Kerala, its ally Jharkhand Mukti Morcha retained Dumri in Jharkhand, and the Trinamool Congress beat the BJP to snatch the Dhupguri seat in West Bengal.
But the biggest result of the day came from Uttar Pradesh, where the Samajwadi Party (SP) beat the BJP candidate by 42,759 votes in Ghosi in what had become a proxy battle between the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
Also Read| BJP wrests Boxanagar from CPI(M), retains Dhanpur in Tripura assembly bypolls
The bypoll in Ghosi was necessitated because former state minister Dara Singh Chauhan, who quit the BJP and joined the SP to win the seat in 2022, deserted the SP earlier this year and returned to the BJP. The SP’s Sudhakar Singh was backed by all opposition parties and Chauhan by NDA allies.
“It is not only the SP candidate’s victory, but also the victory of the INDIA coalition candidate. This will be the outcome of the approaching elections...Bharat has begun making INDIA win... UP will once again lead the change in power,” SP chief Akhilesh Yadav said.
Chauhan began his career with the Bahujan Samaj Party, whose chief Mayawati had asked its voters, predominantly from the Dalit community, to not vote for any candidate.
“As a political party, we will review the results and prepare a plan to serve the people of Ghosi,” said state BJP chief Bhupendra Chaudhary.
To be sure, bypolls are often fought on local issues and the charisma of candidates, and turnouts are usually depressed because the formation of government is not a factor. Hence, results may not hold wider takeaways for the entire state though they do provide clues about political dynamics and strength and weaknesses of parties.
In Tripura, the BJP retained Dhanpur and wrested Boxanagar from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) -- which had raised allegations of irregularities in the voting process.
BJP candidate Tafajjul Hossain won Boxanagar by 30,237 votes. He is the first Muslim BJP lawmaker in the state. The last Muslim BJP candidate to win any assembly election was Aminul Haque Laskar from Sonai seat in Assam in 2016.
The BJP’s Bindu Debnath won Dhanpur by 18,871 votes. In both seats, the CPI(M) stood second.
The bypolls witnessed a direct contest between the ruling BJP and the CPI(M) as the TIPRA Motha and the Congress didn’t put up candidates. The bypolls were necessitated by the death of CPI(M) legislator Samsul Haque in Boxanagar, and the resignation of Union minister of state for social justice and empowerment Pratima Bhoumik, who won from Dhanpur in 2022.
Union home minister Amit Shah congratulated the Tripura state unit and chief minister Manik Saha. “The win will further strengthen our determination to transform Tripura into a prosperous state under the leadership of PM,” he posted on X (formerly twitter), while thanking party workers. The CPI(M) boycotted the counting as the election commission did not reply to its demand for a re-poll in both constituencies.
In Kerala, Chandy Oommen of the Congress won from Puthuppally by 37,000 votes, defeating the CPI(M) candidate, Jaick C Thomas.
Chandy Oommen is the son of the late Oommen Chandy, a former chief minister who died earlier this year, and the election marked a generational shift in the constituency.
As the counting made it clear that he was headed for a victory, Oommen walked towards the grave of his father at the St George Orthodox Church, kneeled before the grave, and wept. With this victory, the Chandy family has now held the seat for 53 continuous years .
“The people have clearly said that the work my father did in the last 53 years will continue. The constituency he adored and looked after for all these years is safe in the hands of Chandy Oommen,” said his sister Achu Oommen.
In West Bengal, the TMC snatched the Dhupguri seat from the BJP by a thin margin of 4,313 votes. The Congress had also put up a candidate who came third.
TMC candidate Nirmal Chandra Roy, a college professor, squared off against BJP’s Tapasi Roy, the widow of a paramilitary jawan who was killed in a terrorist attack in Jammu and Kashmir in 2021. The BJP’s Bishnu Pada Ray won the seat in the 2021 assembly elections but died on July 25 .
TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee said the people of Dhupguri embraced the politics of development over hatred and bigotry. “Saluting every AITC worker for their tireless efforts in connecting with the people. We’re committed to leaving no stone unturned in ensuring Dhupguri’s all-round development,” he posted on X.
BJP leaders said the results in Dhugpuri would differ in the 2024 general elections.
“We don’t see this as a huge setback because we got 44% votes, even after a policy decision regarding Dhupguri was announced in the last leg of the campaign in violation of election norms. The Lok Sabha results in the same region will be quite different,” said Bengal BJP’s chief spokesperson Samik Bhattacharya.
In Bageshwar, BJP’s Parwati Das defeated Congress’s Basant Kumar by a narrow margin of 2,405 votes. The sitting lawmaker and state minister Chandan Ram Das died in April this year. He had won the seat by a margin of 12,141 votes in 2022.
Chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami termed the win as proof of the “unwavering faith” of people in his government.
“In this by-election, the people of Bageshwar have put a stamp on the vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the policies and public welfare schemes of the state government,” he said. Karan Mahara, the state Congress chief, alleged there was a misuse of administrative machinery in the polling process. “Our polling agents were threatened by the BJP workers. We have reduced the margin of victory this time and we will do better next time.”
In Jharkhand, the JMM’s Bebi Devi defeated the All Jharkhand Students Union’s Yashoda Devi by 17,513 votes. Excise minister Devi is wife of JMM strongman and former education minister Jagarnath Mahto, the Dumri lawmaker since 2004 who died in April.
“NDA’s political strength has become zero. They are using agencies to target us. They say we are doing corruption. They started doing tricks to topple my government soon after we came to power. But don’t worry, by the time they put me in jail, I would make you so strong that it is you (people) who would give them string reply,” said chief minister Hemant Soren.
The opposition BJP, however, said the JMM victory was because of misuse of state machinery. Former chief minister and Jharkhand BJP chief Babulal Marandi said the party has not lost political ground.
Experts said that the results were fairly even and only two of the seven seats switched hands and while extrapolating definitive analysis from bypoll results across states was unwise, the opposition could take some heart from retaining the Ghosi seat and winning Dhupguri.
Suvashis Maitra, a West Bengal based political columnist said, “Results to the Karnataka assembly polls showed some anti-BJP sentiment.” He said that the Congress Bharat Jodo Yatra may have had some effect, and there was some evidence, that anti-BJP votes may be consolidating.
