It has been a bad run for nearly a dozen Members of Parliament who tried their luck in the Assembly elections in four States and the Union Territory of Puducherry. Out of seven Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MPs who contested this election, only two won.
In West Bengal, along with Union Minister Babul Supriyo who stood from Tollygunj, the BJP fielded two more Lok Sabha MPs — Locket Chatterjee from Chunchura and Nisith Pramanik from Dinhata. All three lost with Mr. Supriyo losing by the largest margin of over 30,000 votes. Nominated MP of Rajya Sabha Swapan Dasgupta, who decided to contest on a BJP ticket from Tarkeshwar Assembly constituency was forced to resign, after rival Trinamool Congress (TMC) threatened to take a legal recourse. He also lost to his TMC opponent.
Assam Pradesh Congress Committee President Ripun Bora lost his seat of Gohpur. There was a widespread call to replace him ahead of the election from Congress cadres in the State, but it went unheeded.
The BJP though can draw solace from Assam. Rajya Sabha MP Biswajit Daimary, who just months before the Assembly elections, quit and switched from the Bodoland Front Party to join the BJP, had an emphatic victory in the Panery Assembly constituency.
In Kerala, where the BJP drew a blank, losing their sitting seat of Nemom too, Rajya Sabha MPs K.J. Alphonse contesting from Kanjirapally and Suresh Gopi from Thrissur are third on the final tally.
In Nemom, Congress MP K. Muraleedharan who took on the challenge after many senior leaders baulked at the idea of fighting from a sitting BJP seat, lost, trailing behind the Communist Party of India-Marxist’s (CPI-M) Sivankutty and the BJP’s Kummanam Rajasekhran. CPI(M) won the seat.
In Tamil Nadu, two Rajya Sabha MPs from the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam — R. Vaithilingam and K.P. Munusamy — both won with good margins in their respective seats of Orathanadu and Veppanahalli.
