Ruling Congress won the by-election to the Bhagwanpur Vidhan Sabha seat, on Wednesday.
With 59,205 votes Congress candidate Mamata Rakesh won the by-election defeating the Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Rajpal Singh by 36,909 votes.
The by-election to Bhagwanpur seat, which comes under Haridwar district, was necessitated due to the demise of the Surendra Rakesh. Rakesh held the post of Minister of Transport and Social Welfare in the Harish Rawat Cabinet. He was a member of the Progressive Democratic Front (PDF) that supports the Congress government in Uttarakhand.
In March, last year, Rakesh was suspended from the BSP for his alleged involvement in anti-party activities.
The BSP and the SP did not field any candidate from the seat, which made it a direct contest between the Congress candidate Mamata Rakesh who is Surendra Rakesh’s widow, and the BJP candidate Rajpal Singh.
The Harish Rawat government, which lost all five Lok Sabha seats to the BJP in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, has registered a win in the four by-elections to the Vidhan Sabha seats held after the Lok Sabha elections.
With this victory the Congress has attained majority in the Vidhan Sabha. It now has 36 MLAs in the 70-member Vidhan Sabha.
