Assembly Bypolls: BJP surges ahead in 40 out of 59 seats

Majority of BJP winners are from seats belonging to Congress turncoats

Assembly bypolls in 11 states brought cheers to the BJP on Tuesday as it bagged 40 out of the 59 seats riding on Congress turncoats who dominated the saffron party's list of winners.

In a Lok Sabha bypoll in Bihar, JD(U) comfortably won defeating the Congress in Valmiki Nagar seat.

Congress, which was holding 42 of the 59 Assembly seats that went to bypolls, was reduced to 12, mainly due to losses in Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Manipur where its MLAs had switched sides to the BJP.

Thirty-one or three-fourth of the seats the BJP won in this edition of bypolls were held by the Congress. For the BJP, it was huge jump from seven to 40 seats, which also included comfortable leads in three seats in Madhya Pradesh.

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Besides the BJP and Congress, BJD and independents won two each seats while Samajwadi Party, NDPP and JMM won one each.

The sweeping victories in Gujarat (eight seats) and Karnataka (two seats) brought much needed relief for BJP Chief Ministers Vijay Rupani and B S Yediyurappa, as they were under pressure over performance and party central leadership’s perceived lack of trust in them. Shivraj Singh Chouhan government also earned the much needed seats to ensure majority in the Assembly.

For BJP, Telangana was also a welcome news with the party wresting the Dubbak seat from the ruling TRS. Senior BJP leader Ram Madhav tweeted, "great showing by BJP in Telangana. Dubbak won by Raghunandan Rao of BJP despite most undemocratic behaviour by ruling TRS. BJP emerges as the lone alternative to TRS family raj."

In the Opposition camp, Jharkhand gave some jitters to Chief Minister and JMM chief Hemant Soren initially as his brother Basant trailed in the beginning trailing in the family borough Dumka, which the former had vacated. When the final vote was counted, it was all smiles for the Chief Minister as his brother trounced BJP’s Loius Marandi and ally Congress retained the second seat which went to bypolls.

For Congress, Haryana and Chhattisgarh too provided some relief as the party candidates managed to win one each seat. In Haryana, Congress' Indu Raj defeated Olympian Yogeshwar Dutt, whom the BJP fielded for the second time in one year in elections in the state. Dutt, a wrestler, lost both.

Ruling BJD also retained two seats in Odisha while in Nagaland, NDPP won one seat while an independent emerged victorious in the second seat.

It was a do-or-die battle for both the BJP and Congress in Madhya Pradesh where the former had managed to wrest power by engineering a split and wooing a faction led by Jyotiraditya Scindia. Of the 28 seats, which went to polls, BJP was winning 19 seats while Congress was winning the rest.

The emphatic BJP surge ensured the safety of the Chouhan government, which needed seven seats for majority, while cementing Jyotiraditya Scindia's political capital in the state where he was locked in a tussle for supremacy with Kamal Nath in Congress before he jumped the ship. However, the defeat of Scindia loyalists and ministers Adal Singh Kansana and Girra Dandotia took some sheen away.

Winning all the eight seats in Gujarat came as a relief for Rupani, who was facing criticism over the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic amid speculation about a leadership change in the state. All the eight seats belonged to Congress, whose MLAs resigned and joined the ruling BJP, and the saffron party fielded five of them.

Manipur was another state where BJP managed to win four out of the five seats, which belonged to the Congress. It also has the support of the independent who won the bypolls. "A huge day for Manipur BJP! We won 4 out of 5 seats - BJP contested only in four seats...Once again the people of Manipur show their trust in principles and ideology of BJP and leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi," Chief Minister Biren Singh tweeted.

The twin wins in Karnataka emboldened Yediyurappa, who is facing trouble from within the BJP while the saffron party also retained all the six seats it held while the Samajwadi Party managed to hold on to one seat where the bypolls were held.