The results of the assembly by-polls on Thursday brought some respite for the Congress as it won one seat each in Maharashtra and West Bengal from the BJP and the TMC and retained one seat in Tamil Nadu with the support of allies, while the BJP and its ally AJSU were defeated. Western states and Jharkhand got one seat each.
In West Bengal, the ruling Trinamool Congress suffered a crushing defeat from the Sagardighi seat, where Congress’s Byron Biswas won by 22,986 votes. It is the only seat held by the Congress in the state assembly.
Chief Minister of West Bengal Mamata Banerjee alleged that the Congress and the CPI(M) had entered into a pact with the BJP to defeat the Trinamool Congress with their “unethical” alliance.
Banerjee also said that her party would go it alone in the 2024 elections “with the support of the common people” and that the Congress should desist from calling itself anti-BJP.
“For the loss of Sagardighi, I do not blame anyone…But, there is an unethical alliance, which we strongly condemn. BJP transferred its vote to Congress… Everyone played communal card. BJP played the communal card. The Congress, the CPI(M), however, turned out to be the big players in this regard,” he told reporters as the by-election for state Congress president Adhir Chowdhary in his home district Murshidabad was seen as a battle of prestige. This was necessitated after the death of Minister of State Subrata Saha in December last year.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) managed to capture the Chinchwad seat in Maharashtra’s Pune but suffered a setback as it failed to retain its bastion Kasba Peth assembly seat in the district.
Congress’s Ravindra Dhangekar defeated BJP’s Hemant Rasane by 10,950 votes in Kasba Peth, while BJP’s Ashwini Jagtap defeated Nationalist Congress Party’s Vithal alias Nana Kate by 36,168 votes in Chinchwad, an industrial town near Pune.
Kasba assembly constituency was occupied by BJP for 28 years. Girish Bapat, the current BJP MP from Pune, has represented the seat five times till 2019.
Dhangekar, supported by Maha Vikas Aghadi ally Nationalist Congress Party and Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), got 73,194 votes while Rasane got 62,244 votes, the data showed. Election Commission’s website after the last round of counting.
In his response, Uddhav Thackeray said, ‘This is the result of BJP’s use and throw policy. They treated us like this and now even a member of late MLA Mukta Tilak’s family has not been given a ticket. Personal capability of the Congress candidate who did not even use Rahul Gandhi’s photo during the campaign.
While the Congress’s performance in the Tripura assembly elections was disappointing, Nagaland and Meghalaya, with its general secretary communications Jairam Ramesh saying the bypoll results were “very encouraging”.
In an indirect attack on the TMC, Ramesh said, “We are building the Congress for the future and those who thought they would break the Congress and make it big, have not got any success.”
The bypolls saw the first direct contest between the ruling BJP-Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena and the rival MVA after the change of government in Maharashtra in June last year.
As the bypoll became a prestige issue for the MVA as well as the ruling Shinde-BJP alliance in the state, senior leaders like NCP President Sharad Pawar, Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis campaigned for their respective candidates.
The bypoll was necessitated by the demise of sitting BJP MLAs Mukta Tilak (Kasba) and Laxman Jagtap (Chinchwad).
Ruling DMK-backed Congress candidate EVKS Elangovan won the Erode East bypoll, with Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin terming it a public endorsement of his 22-month-old government’s “Dravidian model of governance”.
Elangovan won over one lakh votes out of the 1.7 lakh votes polled on 27 February.
With the “historic and grand victory”, Stalin told reporters, the ground was being laid for an even bigger victory for the DMK-led Secular Progressive Alliance (SPA) in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
BJP state president K Annamalai said he did not see this as an endorsement of the government’s performance and indicated that there were factors such as “sympathy” as well, apparently referring to Elangovan being the father of Congress MLA E Thirumahan Evra. , whose death in January necessitated a by-election.
The Election Commission said All Jharkhand Students’ Union (AJSU) candidate Sunita Chowdhary won from Jharkhand’s Ramgarh by defeating UPA-backed Congress’ Bajrang Mahto by a margin of 21,970 votes.
The AJSU party, which is in alliance with the BJP for the bypoll, got 1,15,669 votes, while the ruling JMM-led coalition partner Congress got 93,699 votes after the counting was over.
The bypoll was necessitated due to the disqualification of Congress MLA Mamata Devi after her conviction in a criminal case.
The Election Commission had announced in January that bypolls to the Lakshadweep Lok Sabha seat as well as six assembly seats in five states — Maharashtra, Arunachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu — would be held on February 27.
The Lakshadweep seat fell vacant following the disqualification of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) member Mohd Faizal following his conviction in a criminal case.
However, on 30 January, the Election Commission put on hold the Lakshadweep Lok Sabha by-election l after the Kerala High Court suspended Faizal’s conviction and sentence.
On 25 January, the Election Commission “revised” the date of polling from February 27 to February 26 for the bypolls to two assembly seats in Maharashtra’s Pune district, after it was informed that the scheduled class 12 and The dates of graduation exams are clashing.
BJP candidate Tsering Lhamu from Lumla seat of Arunachal Pradesh has announced to be elected unopposed MLA on 10th February.
Lhamu, wife of former MLA Jambe Tashi, was the only candidate to file her nomination for the by-election, which was necessitated by the death of her husband in November last year.
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(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed)