I.N.D.I.A. rises, wins 10 of 13 bypoll seats

New Delhi: The I.N.D.I.A. bloc parties continue to shine. The Opposition grouping, which had made an impressive comeback in the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls, swept 10 out 13 Assembly seats that went to bypolls in seven states last week.

The BJP managed to win just two seats — Amarwara in Madhya Pradesh and Hamirpur in Himachal Pradesh. One seat was bagged by an Independent candidate.

Reacting to the good showing by the I.N.D.I.A. bloc, the Congress said the results reflected the changing political climate in the country.

“The results of the byelection in seven states have made it clear that the web of 'fear and illusion' woven by the BJP has been broken. Every class, including farmers, youth, labourers, businessmen and employed people, wants to completely destroy dictatorship and establish the rule of justice. The public is now completely standing with INDIA for the betterment of their lives and protection of the Constitution (sic),” Congress leader Rahul Gandhi posted on X.

Among the notable victories was that of Kamlesh Thakur, wife of Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, who won the Dehra Assembly bypoll. Making her electoral debut, she defeated BJP candidate Hoshiyar Singh by 9,399 votes. Celebrations erupted at the official residence of the Chief Minister in Shimla, with supporters bursting crackers even before the final result was declared.

Bypolls to Himachal’s Dehra, Hamirpur and Nalagarh were necessitated after the three Independents who had voted in favour of the BJP in the Rajya Sabha polls and then resigned to join the party. The BJP fielded them in their respective seats as party candidates. Of the three seats, the BJP only won Hamirpur, while the Congress wrested Nalagarh and Dehra. Dehra has come to the Congress for the first time since it was carved out during delimitation in 2012.

During her election campaign, Ms Thakur had said that she will not need to go to the secretariat to get the work of Dehra done. "I will get the work done from the Chief Minister at home itself," she had said.

BJP's Ashish Sharma won Hamirpur, defeating Congress candidate Pushpender Verma by 1,571 votes. Hamirpur is the home district of Sukhu and the parliamentary constituency of BJP leader Anurag Thakur. Congress' Hardeep Singh Bawa, a five-time president of the Indian National Trade Union Congress, defeated BJP candidate K.L. Thakur in Nalagarh by 8,990 votes.

In the neighbouring hill state of Uttarakhand, the Congress snatched the Manglaur seat from the BSP with its candidate Qazi Mohammad Nizamuddin, defeating the BJP's Kartar Singh Bhadana by 422 votes. This was the fourth win for Nizamuddin from the seat. In the past, he had won the seat twice on a BSP ticket and once as a Congress nominee. In Badrinath, Congress's Lakhpat Singh Butola defeated his nearest rival, former minister and MLA BJP's Rajendra Singh Bhandari.

Punjab's ruling party, the AAP, retained the Jalandhar West Assembly seat as its candidate Mohinder Bhagat defeated BJP's Sheetal Angural by a margin of 37,325 votes in the bypolls.

AAP activists burst firecrackers, distributed sweets and danced to the beats of "dhol" over the victory of Bhagat. With this victory, the AAP will now have 91 MLAs in the 117-member Punjab Assembly. Bhagat, 66, said voters gave their mandate in favour of the AAP because of the work undertaken by the Bhagwant Mann-led dispensation. "From this result, it is clear that people are liking the works of the state government," he said.

The victory comes as a relief for Mann, whose party faced a drubbing in the Lok Sabha polls in which it could win just three of the state's 13 parliamentary constituencies.

In Bihar’s Purnia district, Independent candidate Shankar Singh won Rupauli, defeating NDA nominee Kaladhar Prasad Mandal of the JD(U). RJD's Bima Bharti was in the third position. The byelection was necessitated by the resignation of Bima Bharti, who had won the seat for the JD(U) several times but quit the party recently to contest the Lok Sabha elections on an RJD ticket.

In Tamil Nadu, the ruling DMK emerged victorious in Vikravandi when party's Anniyur Siva, alias A. Sivashanmugam, defeated NDA constituent Pattali Makkal Katchi’s C. Anbumani. The byelection was necessitated due to the death of DMK legislator N. Pugazhenthi in April.

The Trinamul Congress won all the four seats in the bypolls that took place in West Bengal’s Maniktala in North Kolkata, Bagda in North 24 Parganas, Ranaghat South in Nadia and Raiganj in North Dinajpur.

The polling in the state was marred by stray incidents of violence, but that did not deter the voters, who turned out in impressive numbers. TMC candidates Krishna Kalyani, Madhuparna Thakur and Mukut Mani Adhikari won the Raiganj, Bagda and Ranaghat Dakshin seats, respectively, while Supti Pandey won in the Maniktala segment in Kolkata. The BJP secured the second position in all four seats, while the Left-Congress alliance was a distant third and also lost deposits in two Assembly segments.

The TMC won the Matua community-majority Bagda and Ranaghat Dakshin after a gap of eight years. With this victory, the TMC's tally grows to 215 in the 294-member Assembly. It also enjoys the support of three BJP MLAs, who switched over to the ruling party but are yet to resign from the House. The BJP's tally has come down to 71 from the 77 it had won in 2021.

In Madhya Pradesh, BJP's Kamlesh Pratap Shah won Amarwara against the Congress' Dheeran Sah Invati. The byelection in Amarwara was necessitated following the resignation of Congress MLA Kamlesh Shah from the Assembly after he quit the party and joined the BJP ahead of the April-May Lok Sabha polls this year.