BJP Does Poor Show: INDIA Block Flexes Muscles Again, After Stunning Show in Parliamentary Polls: Wins 10 Out of 13 Seats In State By Polls:
By Tajdar H. Zaidi
The Opposition INDIA alliance, which gave a tough fight to the BJP in the Lok Sabha polls, has come out on top in the by-elections to 13 Assembly seats across seven states. The INDIA bloc won 10 seats, while the Bharatiya Janata Party, which returned for a record third term after winning the Lok Sabha polls, claimed just two seats.
The Congress, Trinamool Congress (TMC), AAP and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) are the INDIA bloc parties that fielded candidates in the bypolls held on Wednesday in Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Tamil Nadu.
In Punjab, AAP’s Mohinder Bhagat won the Jalandhar West seat by over 23,000 votes. In West Bengal, Trinamool Congress candidates won all the four seats where elections were held.
Himachal Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu’s wife Kamlesh Thakur, who made her electoral debut, won the Dehra elections. The Congress won the Nalagarh seat in the state too, while BJP’s Ashish Sharma emerged the winner in Hamirpur.
In West Bengal, the TMC has won four seats, with its candidates defeating BJP opponents by significant margins. In Tamil Nadu, the DMK’s Anniyur Siva won the Vikravandi assembly seat by nearly 60,000 votes.
In Uttarakhand, Congress candidates won both both the Badrinath and Manglaur seats, while in Madhya Pradesh, the BJP’s Kamslesh Pratap Shahi won the Amarwar seat.
The counting of votes for the 13 legislative assembly seats spread across seven states began on Saturday morning. Voting was held on Wednesday for the assembly seats in Bihar, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, and Himachal Pradesh.
These bypolls were the first since the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, which saw the BJP winning 240 seats – 32 short of the majority. The NDA, however, managed to cross the halfway mark of 272 with a total tally of 293 seats. The Congress-led INDIA bloc clinched 232 seats.
