Bypolls to one Lok Sabha seat, 6 Assembly seats 'mixed bag' for BJP & Opposition

The results of the bypolls to one Lok Sabha and six assembly seats across five states were a mixed bag for the opposition and the BJP. In Odisha, the ruling Biju Janata Dal retained the Padampur seat in Bargarh, while the ruling Congress in Chhattisgarh retained the Bhanupratappur assembly and Rajasthan's Sardarshahar in Churu district. In all three, BJP candidates were runners-up. The BJP rejoiced at wresting UP's Rampur Sadar from the Samajwadi Party and Bihar's Kurhal from the state's ruling Grand Alliance, while the SP's Dimple Yadav retained Mainpuri, the seat her late father-in-law Mulayam Singh Yadav had held.

In his victory speech at the BJP headquarters in New Delhi, PM Narendra Modi noted the Rampur Sadar victory, a bastion of SP leader Azam Khan. Amid the SP's allegations that voters of a particular religion and caste, a reference to its Muslim-Yadav support base, were stopped from exercising their franchise on December 5, with a poor turnout of 34 per cent, BJP's Akash Saxena defeated SP's Md Asim Raja.

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Modi, however, didn't mention the BJP's loss in Khatauli, a seat in western UP, the site of the Hindutva project since the Muzaffarnagar communal riots of 2013, that the BJP's Vikram Singh Saini won in 2017 and 2022 but was disqualified subsequent to his conviction in the Muzaffarnagar riots case. The Rashtriya Lok Dal, an ally of the SP, won the seat. RLD's Madan Bhaiyya defeated Rajkumari Saini by over 22,000 votes.

BJP chief J P Nadda exulted at the party's win in Kurhani in Bihar, defeating its erstwhile ally, the JDU, supported by the ruling grand alliance. This is the alliance's second defeat of the three bypolls since Nitish Kumar dumped the BJP-led NDA. In October, the BJP wrested Gopalganj from the RJD. "Chemistry and not arithmetic works," said Nadda on the Kurhani win. BJP's Kedar Prasad Gupta defeated Manoj Singh Kushwaha of JDU by 3,645 votes.

Congress' Anil Sharma defeated Ashok Kumar Pincha of the BJP by a margin of 26,850 votes in Rajasthan's Sardarshahar assembly. This is the 10th time the Congress won the seat. Congress candidate Savitri Mandavi won from Bhanupratappur Assembly by a margin of 21,171 votes against BJP's Brahmanand Netam. Mandavi is the wife of Congress MLA Manoj Singh Mandavi whose death necessitated the by-election. Former IPS officer Akbar Ram Korram, who contested as an independent, polled 23,417 votes.

In Odisha's Padampur, ruling BJD's Barsha Singh Bariha won by a margin of 42,679 votes, defeating the BJP's Pradip Purohit. Barsha is the daughter of late MLA Bijay Ranjan Singh Bariha whose death in October necessitated the by-poll.