A united Opposition wrested the Kairana and Bhandara-Gondia Lok Sabha seats from the BJP, which managed to hold on to Palghar in Maharashtra while its ally NDPP won the lone Nagaland seat in the lower House.
In a setback for the BJP, the party could win only a single Assembly seat in Uttarakhand while the Congress and other Opposition parties secured the remaining 10 across nine States.
The Kairana Lok Sabha seat in western Uttar Pradesh was a prestigious battle as the BJP had fielded Mriganka Singh, daughter of Hukum Singh, whose passing away in February this year necessitated the bypoll – against the Opposition’s Tabassum Hasan, who won by a margin of 44,618 votes. Contesting on a Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) ticket, Ms. Hasan’s thumping victory once again underscored the importance of the grand alliance as her candidature was supported by the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).
Ganna vs. Jinnah
Kairana is the third straight defeat for the BJP in Lok Sabha bypolls in U.P. after Phulpur and Gorakhpur. It was being seen as a battle between ganna (sugarcane) and Jinnah.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s repeated reference to Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s portrait in the Aligarh Muslim University during the campaign was seen as an attempt to polarise voters on religious lines.
The Opposition, however, campaigned against the Modi government’s failure to get the sugarcane farmers their dues from the various sugar mills that stood at over ₹12,000 crore.
The Palghar Lok Sabha seat in Maharashtra brought cheer to the BJP as its candidate Rajendra Gavit defeated Shiv Sena’s Shrinivas Wanga by 29,572 votes.
But the votes polled in favour of the BJP fell sharply from 5.33 lakh in 2014 to 2.72 lakh in this election. In Bhandara-Gondia, the other Lok Sabha seat from the State, NCP’s candidate Kukade Madhukarrao Yashwantrao, defeated the BJP’s Hemant (Tanubhau) by over 48,000 votes. The Congress had supported the NCP.
In Nagaland, however, BJP ally Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP)’s Tokheho Yepthomi won the Nagaland parliamentary seat by a margin of over 1.5 lakh votes, trouncing C. Apok Jamir of the Opposition Naga People’s Front.
The Lok Sabha bypoll results were equally divided between the BJP-led alliance and the Opposition parties (each side winning two seats).
The Assembly bypolls seemed to be a big setback for the ruling party with just the one seat in Uttarakhand. The Congress alone won 4 of the 11 Assembly seats (Maharashtra, Meghalaya, Karnataka and Punjab) while other players got six — JMM two in Jharkhand; CPI (M), SP, RJD and Trinamool one each in Kerala, U.P., Bihar and West Bengal, respectively.
Valuable lessons: Rahul
Congress president Rahul Gandhi tweeted, “Valuable lessons to be learnt from the victories and the defeats for all parties.” CPI (M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury said, “The overall results from the bypolls are not only about the unity of secular forces but also the decline in BJP’s vote share.”
Home Minister Rajnath Singh, however, said that at times, “One has to take two steps backward before a big leap and the BJP is going to take a massive leap.”
“The writing on the wall is clear. The BJP’s exit and success of the Congress and its allies are guaranteed,” Congress leader from U.P. Pramod Tiwari told reporters at a press conference.
Assembly seats
The ruling BJP and its allies won only three of the 15 seats (4 Lok Sabha seats and 11 Assembly seats), results for which were announced on Thursday.
Lok Sabha seats
