New Delhi (TIP): Of the 30 assembly bypoll results declared on November 2, the BJP won seven seats, the Congress won eight seats and regional parties 15. Nine of these regional parties are NDA allies. Despite being in power, BJP lost all three seats in Himachal and one each in Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh. All other ruling parties won. It makes BJP’s clean sweep in Assam, with bigger margins, very significant. In Assam, the ruling BJP and its ally, the UPPL, won all five seats where bypolls were held. In states like West Bengal, Assam and Rajasthan, the respective ruling parties displayed a firm grip on power, winning all seats where bypolls were held.

By-elections were also held on three Lok Sabha constituencies spread over Madhya Pradesh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Himachal Pradesh. In Madhya Pradesh, the polls were held for the Raigaon (SC), Prithvipur and Jobat (ST) assembly segments and the Khandwa Lok Sabha seat. All seats where bypolls were held had lost their incumbents to Covid. While the BJP wrested Prithvipur and Jobat from the Congress, it lost Raigaon to the Congress. The BJP now has a net gain of one assembly seat in the Vidhan Sabha, taking their tally to 127 seats, and the Congress’s to 96 in the 230-member House. The BJP also retained the Khandwa Lok Sabha seat. While the loss of Prithvipur and Jobat came as a shock to the Congress, the BJP’s victories here also have an inherent message for the original BJP cadre. In both seats, the BJP bet on defectors—Sulochana Rawat, who jumped ship from the Congress and won Jobat for the BJP; and Shishupal Yadav, who came from the Samajwadi Party and delivered Prithvipur. At the end of the day, it was the BJP’s superior poll management and sheer hard work that helped them win an extra seat. Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan held 24 public meetings in the three assembly segments during the campaign period while former CM Kamal Nath held fewer public meetings. Chouhan, in fact, stayed the last five nights of his campaigning period in the various poll-bound areas. That the results would have been analysed as a measure of Chouhan’s popularity, or lack thereof, was known to him. Political gossip has, in the past, led the BJP to change CMs in several states and political watchers wondered whether that would be the case in MP too, but the results have brought relief to Chouhan, especially because of the BJP’s loss in Himachal Pradesh. “The BJP’s victory in Prithvipur and Jobat is historical. We were told the BJP cannot win these seats. That it was pointless working hard there. The results are for all to see,” Chouhan told the media. The Congress in the state said that the BJP’s victories were a result of administrative highhandedness. “We respect the mandate and will analyse the results. The Congress was not only competing against the BJP but also against its money and muscle power. There were massive and multiple poll code violations and complaints were made to the Election Commission, who did not act on them,” said Congress spokesperson Narendra Saluja.

Interestingly, issues such as price rise, especially that of diesel and petrol, did not seem to have an impact on the outcome, although the margin of BJP victory at Khandwa came down substantially from 2.6 lakh in 2019.

In Rajasthan, Congress retained Vallabh Nagar and snatched Dhariawad from the BJP. The outcome indicates a consistent good performance in the eight by elections chief minister Ashok Gehlot has faced so far since coming to power in 2018. Gehlot has led Congress to win six and given a close fight in another two. The high command’s trust in Gehlot is bound to be cemented further, given his choice of candidates for the bypolls. In Vallabh Nagar, he gave the ticket to Priti Shakhawat, wife of Gajendra Singh, a hardcore Pilot loyalist who had joined the revolt and died last year. For Dhariwad, he chose Nagraj Meena, reading the mood of the region well and not giving the ticket to the kin of MLA who had died resulting in bypolls. The party high command is unlikely to pressure Gehlot into changing his recommendations for ministers and departments in the forthcoming cabinet reshuffle and expansion.

In West Bengal, the Trinamool looks unstoppable and invincible. It has not only won the bypolls in all of the four Assembly constituencies where elections were held on October 30, but it has won with big margins of over a lakh each in two seats, 93,000 in the third seat and over 60,000 in the fourth. The BJP had to forfeit its deposits in three of the four seats. The party, which had secured two of these four seats just six months ago, lost both—Dinhata by 1,60,000 and the other, Shantipur, by 63,000 votes. With this the Trinamool Congress’s tally in the Assembly becomes 222 and the BJP’s 68. The vote percentage of Trinamool in all these seats was 75 per cent as against the 14 per cent voteshare of the BJP and 7 per cent voteshare of the Left. West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee has credited the victory to her party’s work on development and the people’s rejection of divisive hate politics. This victory is indeed going to pump up Mamata’s stakes in national politics.

In Himachal Pradesh, BJP national president J.P. Nadda’s home state, the results in three assembly seats and the Mandi Lok Sabha have come as major embarrassment for the party and has rung alarm bells for chief minister Jairam Thakur almost a year before the state goes to assembly poll. The BJP’s poor performance seems to be a combination of factionalism, anti-incumbency sentiments, price rise and inefficient ticket allocation. By elections at the Mandi Lok Sabha seat in Himachal saw the election of Pratibha Singh, the widow of former CM Virbhadra Singh. Among the assembly segments, Fatehpur and Arki have been traditional Congress strongholds, while Jubbal-Kothkai seems to have gone to the Congress due to denial of ticket to the son of incumbent BJP MLA whose death necessitated the bye elections.

Apart from detailing the reasons for defeat, the BJP will also have to think through strategy. After its victory, the Congress will be rejuvenated unit and might see the warring groups of Kaul Singh Thakur, Mukesh Agnihotri and others agree to accept leadership of now third time parliamentarian Pratibha Singh.

In Bihar, with Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) winning the two assembly seats, Kusheshwar Asthan and Tarapur, where bypolls were held on October 30, the CM has received a shot in the arm after the 2020 assembly elections left his party with a reduced strength in the Bihar assembly. The results have also signaled that Nitish’s political constituency of OBC-EBC-Dalit is still intact despite Tejashwi Yadav’s concerted efforts to take away a chunk of it. The less than 50 per cent turnout of voters in the October 30 bypolls—much less than 54.76 per cent voting observed when assembly polls were held in October 2020 when Covid was a bigger crisis—was seen as a major indicator of a non-existent anti-incumbency in the two constituencies. Tarapur and Kusheshwar Asthan were won by JD(U) in October 2020 and fell vacant when their representatives passed away earlier this year. Though the bypoll results were not meant to be numerically decisive, as the ruling NDA already had a simple majority (126 in a 243-member assembly), RJD under Tejashwi Yadav had made a massive effort to script an upset.                Source: India Today