By-Election Results: Cheer For ‘United Opposition’, Mixed Results For The BJP

Counting of votes for by-elections on four Lok Sabha seats and 10 state assembly seats across 11 states concluded today (31 May), throwing a mixed bag of results for the ruling Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP).

Among the Lok Sabha seats, BJP won one seat, Palghar in Maharastra with its NDA alliance partner NDPP winning another in Nagaland. The lone seat in Nagaland was up for by-polls after it was vacated by NDPP leader and Nagaland Chief Minister (CM) Neiphiu Rio.

Meanwhile, in Palghar the BJP’s Gavit Dhedya defeated Shiv Sena’s Shriniwas Vanaga despite heavy campaigning by Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackrey. Thackrey has blamed faulty EVMs for the defeat and said that the party may move Supreme Court to demand a recounting of votes.

The BJP however lost the highly contested Kairana lok Sabha seat in Uttar Pradesh (UP), despite CM Yogi Adityanath campaigning for the party candidate, Mriganka Singh. The Rastriya Lok Dal candidate (RLD), Tabassum Hasan won the election by a margin of over 50,000 votes making her the only Muslim MP from UP. All the opposition parties had put their weight behind the RLD candidate making it a ‘BJP-vs-All’ contest. Singh congratulated Hasan for the win.

The other seat in Maharastra, Bandhara-Gondiya, was won by the NCP. It was earlier held by the BJP.

Among the state assembly seats, Congress won three seats in Punjab, Karnataka and Meghalaya, while the BJP managed to win just one seat of the 10 up for polls. BJP won the Tharali seat in Uttarakhand.

However, the BJP managed to emerge as the primary opposition to the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal’s Maheshtala.

In Kerala, the BJP managed to put up a good show with more than 32,000 votes being polled by its candidate. CPI(M) won the seat polling 67,303 votes.

On other seats, SP won the Noorpur seat in UP, while the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha won the two assembly seats up for re-election in Jharkhand.