The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has pulled out a stellar performance by winning four of the seven seats in the assembly byelections, the results of which were announced on Sunday. The saffron party won the politically crucial seats of Haryana’s Adampur, Uttar Pradesh’s Gola Gokarannath, Bihar’s Gopalganj and Odisha’s Dhamnagar and put up a tough fight against the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) in Munugode.
The Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) won the Mokama seat in Bihar while the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Thackeray) retained the Andheri East seat.
The BJP retained the Gola Gokarannath assembly seat in Uttar Pradesh, with its candidate Aman Giri defeating his nearest rival and Samajwadi Party candidate by over 34,000 votes. The seat fell vacant after the death of BJP MLA Arvind Giri on September 6.
In Adampur of Haryana , BJP candidate Bhavya Bishnoi defeated his nearest rival and Congress candidate Jai Prakash by a margin of around 16,000 votes. With the win, former chief minister Bhajan Lal’s family has maintained its winning streak in the assembly segment. Bhavya is Bhajan Lal’s grandson.
The Adampur seat has been held by the Bhajan Lal family since 1968, with the late ex-chief minister representing it on nine occasions, his wife Jasma Devi once, and younger son Kuldeep Bishnoi on four occasions. The by-election was necessitated after Kuldeep Bishnoi resigned as MLA from the seat and switched from the Congress to the BJP in August.
In Bihar’s Mokama, RJD candidate Neelam Devi won by more than 16,000 votes. The by-poll was necessitated after the disqualification of her husband MLA Anant Kumar Singh.
However, the BJP retained the Gopalganj assembly seat in the state with its candidate Kusum Devi, wife of MLA Subhash Singh whose death had necessitated the by-election, polling 70,032 votes, while RJD’s Mohan Gupta got 68,243.
In Maharashtra, Rutuja Latke, the candidate of the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) won the bypoll to Andheri (East) assembly seat in Mumbai by bagging more than 66,000 votes, followed by 12,086 votes polled in favour of the None Of The Above (NOTA) option. Latke got 66,530 votes out of the total 86,570 votes.
The by-election, necessitated due to the death of sitting Shiv Sena MLA and Rutuja Latke’s husband Ramesh Latke in May this year, was a mere formality after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) withdrew its candidate from the race.
In Telangana, the ruling TRS won the high-voltage bypoll to Munugode assembly segment by over 10,000 votes. TRS candidate Kusukuntla Prabhakar Reddy, however, faced a tough fight from his nearest BJP rival Komatireddy Raj Gopal Reddy.
Komatireddy Raj Gopal Reddy was with the Congress earlier and the election was necessitated after he resigned from the party in August. Over 93 per cent polling was reported in the bypoll held on November 3.
The BJP retained Odisha’s Dhamnagar seat after its candidate Suryabanshi Suraj defeated his BJD rival Abanti Das by a margin of 9881 votes. The Dhamnagar seat fell vacant following the death of Suraj’s father and BJP MLA Bishnu Charan Sethi in September.
