SP, AAP jolted in bypolls; BJP wins 2 Lok Sabha and 3 Assembly seats, Cong bags 2 in states

The Samajwadi Party and AAP were jolted by Lok Sabha bypoll defeats on Sunday as they surrendered their sitting seats to the BJP and Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab respectively, despite both registering spectacular to not-so-bad show in the Assembly elections three months ago.

AAP lost Sangrur seat to Akali Dal (Amritsar) while SP lost its fiefdoms Azamgarh and Rampur to the BJP by substantial votes.

In bypolls to seven Assembly seats in four states, BJP won three in Tripura, including Chief Minister Manik Saha, Congress won one each seat in Tripura and Jharkhand, AAP one in Delhi and YSR Congress one in Andhra Pradesh.

For the AAP, the impressive victory in Delhi’s Rajinder Nagar Assembly seat, where a bypoll was necessitated by sitting MLA Raghav Chadha becoming Rajya Sabha MP, did not help the Arvind Kejriwal-led party to gloss over its defeat in Sangrur. This would also mean that AAP would not have a single MP in Lok Sabha though it has ten in Rajya Sabha, owing to the Punjab Assembly victory.

Also read: Akhilesh red-faced as BJP wrests SP bastions Rampur, Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh bypolls

The defeat added more salt to the wound as it was the seat vacated by Bhagwant Mann when he was chosen as Chief Minister, indicating that it was firm message to the AAP government in Punjab that its honeymoon in power is over and that voters have not taken kindly to the deteriorating law and order in the border state.

AAP's Gurmail Singh lost to Simranjit Singh Mann by 5,822 votes. The electoral loss, though in a bypoll, will have an impact on the party in the state where it won 92 seats out of 117 just in March. Interestingly, BJP polled more votes than Sukhbir Singh Badal-led Akali Dal but less than Congress.

Months after improving its tally in the UP elections, SP was in for a huge blow as it lost its two fiefdoms -- Azamgarh represented by party chief Akilesh Yadav and Rampur by Azam Khan before they got elected to the state assembly -- to the BJP.

BJP's Dinesh Lal Yadav 'Nirauha', a Bhojpuri actor who lost to Akhilesh in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, defeated Yadav family man Dharmendra Yadav by 8,679 votes while in Rampur, Khan's Man Friday Mohd Asim Raja lost to BJP's Ghanshyam Singh Lodhi by 42,192 votes. In Azamgarh, BSP had polled substantial (2.66 lakh) votes and came third while it did not contest Rampur.

In Assembly bypolls, the BJP won three seats in Tripura. Chief Minister Saha, a Rajya Sabha MP who replaced Biplab Deb a year before Assembly elections, won the bypolls from Town Bardowali by defeating Ashish Kumar Saha, an MLA who quit the BJP to join Congress in February, by a margin of 6,104 votes.

Also read | Bypolls: BJP bags 4 seats, AAP suffers jolt in Sangrur

One of the highlights of the bypolls was the dismal performance by the Trinamool Congress, which is hoping to usurp the space of the Congress. However, the party despite its high decibel campaign could garner only 3,933 votes -- 847, 986, 1020 and 1080 -- from the four seats it contested while losing deposit in all.

BJP’s Swapna Das won from Surma and Malina Debnath from Jubarajnagar while Congress won Agartala where former Minister Sudip Roy Barman, who was representing the seat as a BJP MLA but quit the party in February, by a margin of 3,163 votes. Congress came second in two seats while it did not fight the Surma seat. CPI(M) too came second in two while it left Town Bardowali to its Left ally Forward Bloc.

As expected, YSR Congress romped home comfortably in Andhra Pradesh's Atmakur seat by a whopping margin of 82,888 votes. YSR Congress' M Vikram Reddy, whose brother and then Industries Minister M Gautam Reddy's death led to bypolls, polled 1.02 lakh votes while his nearest BJP candidate Bharath Kumar Gundlapalli got just 19,332 votes.

In Jharkhand, Congress' Shilpi Neha Tirkey won by 23,517 votes in the Mandar seat against BJP's Gangotri Kujur.

BYPOLL RESULTS – LOK SABHA

PUNJAB

*Sangrur

Simranjit Singh Mann -- Akali Dal (Amritsar) -- 253154 -- (35.61%)

Gurmail Singh -- AAP -- 247332 (34.79%)

Dalvir Singh Goldy -- Congress -- 79668 (11.21%)

Kewal Singh Dhillon -- BJP -- 66,298 (9.33%)

Kamaldeep Kaur Rajoana -- Akali Dal -- 44428 (6.25%)

UTTAR PRADESH

*Azamgarh

Dinesh Lal Yadav "Nirahua" -- BJP -- 312768 (34.39%)

Dharmendra Yadav -- SP -- 304089 (33.44%)

Shah Alam -- BSP -- 266210 (29.27%)

*Rampur

Ghanshyam Singh Lodhi -- BJP -- 367397 (51.96%)

Mohd. Asim Raja -- SP -- 325205 (46%)

BYOLL RESULTS – ASSEMBLY

ANDHRA PRADESH

*Atmakar

M Vikram Reddy -- YSR Congress -- 102241 -- (74.47%)

Bharath Kumar Gundlapalli -- BJP -- 19353 -- (14.1%)

JHARKHAND

*Mandar

Shilpi Neha Tirkey -- Congress -- 95062 (43.85%)

Gangotri Kujur -- BJP -- 71545 (33.01%)

DELHI

*Rajinder Nagar

Durgesh Pathak -- AAP -- 40319 (55.78%)

Rajesh Bhatia -- BJP -- 28851 (39.91%)

Prem Lata -- Congress -- 2014 (2.79%)

TRIPURA

*Agartala

Sudip Roy Barman -- Congress -- 17431 (43.46%)

Ashok Sinha -- BJP -- 14628 (35.57%)

Krishna Majumder -- CPI(M) -- 6808 (16.97%)

Panna Deb -- Trinamool Congress -- 842 (2.1%)

*Jubarajnagar

Malina Debnath -- BJP -- 18769 (51.83%)

Sailendra Chandra Nath -- CPI(M) -- 14197 (39.2%)

Susmita Debnath -- Congress -- 1440 (3.98%)

Mrinal Kanti Debnath -- Trinamool Congress -- 1080 (2.98%)

*Surma

Swapna Das -- BJP -- 16677 (42.34%)

Baburam Satnami -- Ind -- 12094 (30.7%)

Anjan Das -- CPI(M) -- 8415 (21.36%)

Arjun Namasudra -- Trinamool Congress -- 1341 (3.4%)

*Town Bardowali

Manik Saha -- BJP -- 17181 (51.63%)

Asish Kumar Saha -- Congress -- 11077 (33.29%)

Raghunath Sarkar -- Forward Bloc -- 3376 (10.15%)

Sanhita Bhattacharya -- Trinamool Congress -- 986 (2.96%)