Opposition bloc I.N.D.I.A makes electoral mark with wins in bypoll seats

Bypoll results in seven seats in six states gave the Opposition I.N.D.I.A enough reasons to look at future with more confidence with the bloc overcoming tough battles in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghosi and Jharkhand’s Dumri with ease, while sending signals for a realignment in West Bengal.

The Samajwadi Party retained Ghosi and JMM once again won Dumri where I.N.D.I.A parties stuck to each other, while in West Bengal’s Dhupguri, the Trinamool Congress overcame the challenge by Congress-backed CPI(M) and the BJP, a result which it will use to convince the Congress to leave its alliance with the Left.

The CPI(M) had the worst performance among the I.N.D.I.A partners, losing both Boxanagar and Dhanpur in Tripura to the BJP despite support from the Congress, while it lost Kerala’s Puthupally to the grand old party. In Uttarakhand’s Bageshwar, the BJP retained its seat.

Altogether, BJP won three seats and lost one, Congress retained its Kerala seat, Trinamool added one seat by defeating the BJP, JMM showed it still has the zeal to win, and the Samajwadi Party hung on to its seat despite its sitting MLA shifting loyalties.

The most watched fight was in Ghosi where the I.N.D.I.A alliance was tested with Congress and RLD announcing support to the SP candidate and BSP calling to vote for NOTA.

With its MLA Dara Singh Chouhan resigning and fighting from the BJP, it was a prestige battle for the SP whose candidate Sudhakar Singh extracted revenge by defeating Chouhan by 42,759 votes, binning the saffron party’s gamble. Singh polled 1.24 lakh or 57.19 per cent while Chouhan got 88,688 (37.54 per cent).

Interestingly, the number of NOTA votes was only 1,725, appearing to indicate that a section of BSP voters preferred the SP candidate. In the 2022 polls, BSP polled 54,248 votes.

Dumri saw a tough battle initially but JMM fielded Bebi Devi, the widow of sitting MLA Jagarnath Mahto whose death necessitated the bypolls, getting the better of AJSU’s Yasodha Devi.

The BJP’s calculation was that the coming together of AJSU and the saffron party would help them conquer the seat. One thing that will comfort the combine will be the decrease in margin by half from 34,000 to 17,153 votes.

The Dhupguri victory will be a shot in the arm for the Trinamool Congress as it wrests the seat from the BJP defeating its candidate Tapasi Roy by 4,313 votes. Its candidate bagged 46.28 per cent votes while CPI(M) got 6.52 per cent, a statistic that the Trinamool will surely highlight to the Congress to dump the Left.

In Tripura, BJP won both the seats, wresting one from the Congress-backed CPI(M), which had boycotted the counting alleging wide-scale rigging, and retaining its sitting seat.

BJP's Tafajjal Hossain, the first Muslim MLA for the party, defeated CPI(M)'s Mizan Hossain by 30,237 votes. The BJP nominee bagged 34,146 or 87.97 per cent of the votes in the minority dominated seat while CPI(M) got just 3,909 votes or 10.07 per cent votes.

In Dhanpur where Union Minister Pratima Bhoumik's resignation necessitated the bypoll, BJP's Bindu Debnath won by a margin of 18,871 votes. He bagged 70.35 per cent votes while his CPI(M) rival Kaushik Chanda got 26.12 per cent.

Though Tipra Motha did not announce support for anyone, the meeting of its top leader Pradyot Burman with Home Minister Amit Shah was seen by the Opposition as a tacit understanding.

In Kerala’s Puthupally where Congress and the CPI(M) came face to face, the former’s Chandy Oommen retained his father former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy's seat by a record margin of 37,719 seats. Congress in Kerala is projecting a vote against the CPI(M)-led government. BJP's Ligin Lal managed to get only 6,558 votes and lost his deposit.

Uttarakhand Bageshwar was retained by BJP’s Parvati Dass, who defeated Congress’s Basant Kumar by 2,405 votes. Though Congress supported SP in neighbouring Ghosi, SP did not reciprocate it in Bageshwar but could bag only 637 votes.