Politics

Bypoll Results in 7 States: INDIA Wins 6 Seats, Leads in 4; NDA Secures 1, Ahead in 1

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) secured one seat while the INDIA group gained at least six seats and was leading in four, giving the opposition a boost on Saturday, July 13, as ballots were tabulated for the bypolls in 13 assembly seats across seven states. The Congress was ahead in two of the 13 assembly seats, including Uttarakhand. The Congress secured 99 seats in the just ended Lok Sabha elections. The party fielded Kamlesh Thakur, the wife of Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, and won the Dehra assembly seat in Himachal Pradesh.

The seat was won by Mohinder Bhagat, the AAP’s candidate from Punjab’s Jalandhar West, who defeated Sheetal Angural, the BJP’s nominee, by a margin of more than 37,000 votes. Bhagat was the closest competitor backed by the INDIA bloc. The chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress has secured three assembly seats, including Raiganj and Ranaghat Dakhisn, according to data from the Election Commission of India (ECI). With the Maniktala assembly section, the party had overtaken its opponent. These four assembly seats were up for by-election on July 10. Meanwhile, the leader of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), Anniyur Siva, was leading in Tamil Nadu’s Vikravandi assembly constituency.

In Himachal Pradesh, Ashish Sharma of the BJP leads in Hamirpur, while Congress candidates Hardeep Singh Bawa and Kamlesh Tahkur, the wife of chief minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, are leading in Dehra and Nalagarh. In Dehra, Kamlesh Thakur defeated Hoshiyar Singh of the BJP. According to the website, Congress’s Pushpinder Verma was behind the BJP’s Ashish Sharma in Hamirpur by 1,545 votes, and Congress’s Hardeep Singh Bawa was ahead of the BJP’s K L Thakur in Nalagarh by 4,137 votes. Independent candidate Shankar Singh was leading in the Bihar Rupauli seat, with Janata Dal (United) contender Kaladhar Mandal trailing closely behind.

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Bima Bharti, who quit from the United Janata Dal in March to run for the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in the Lok Sabha election from the Purnia parliamentary constituency, held the Rupauli seat. Nevertheless, Rajesh Ranjan, an independent, defeated her. The Bharatiya Janata Party emerged victorious in the Himachal Pradesh Hamirpur seat and held a leading position in the Madhya Pradesh Amarwara constituency. The by-elections are viewed as a crucial test for the BJP, which secured 240 seats but fell short of the 272 majority needed to establish a government, necessitating the help of allies in the NDA coalition. This is in stark contrast to its triumphs of 2014 with 282 seats and 2019 with 303 seats, respectively, where it won a majority on its own. The NDA passed the halfway point with the help of important allies like N Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and Nitish Kumar’s JD(U), which won 16 and 12 seats in Andhra Pradesh and Bihar, respectively, along with other coalition partners.