The Bharatiya Janata Party has pulled off an impressive performance by winning four of the seven seats in the assembly byelections, the results of which were announced on Sunday. The saffron party won the politically crucial seats of Haryana's Adampur, Uttar Pradesh's Gola Gokarannath, Bihar's Gopalganj and Odisha's Dhamnagar and put up a tough fight against the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) in Munugode. The Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) won the Mokama seat in Bihar while the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Thackeray) retained the Andheri East seat.
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UTTAR PRADESH
The BJP retained the Gola Gokarannath assembly seat with its candidate Aman Giri defeating his nearest rival and Samajwadi Party candidate by over 34,000 votes. The seat fell vacant after the death of BJP MLA Arvind Giri on September 6.
After winning the elections, Giri said he would fulfil the dream of his father Arvind Giri and ensure development of the constituency.
A voter turnout of 57.35 per cent was recorded in the November 3 bypoll. Seven candidates were in the fray. With the BSP and the Congress keeping away, it was a direct contest between Aman Giri and Tiwari.
SP chief Akhilesh Yadav alleged that there were irregularities at every step in the bypoll and his party's workers were harassed.
HARYANA
In Adampur, BJP candidate Bhavya Bishnoi defeated his nearest rival and Congress candidate Jai Prakash by a margin of around 16,000 votes. With the win, former chief minister Bhajan Lal's family has maintained its winning streak in the assembly segment. Bhavya is Bhajan Lal's grandson.
The Adampur seat has been held by the Bhajan Lal family since 1968, with the late ex-chief minister representing it on nine occasions, his wife Jasma Devi once, and younger son Kuldeep Bishnoi on four occasions.
The by-election was necessitated after Kuldeep Bishnoi resigned as MLA from the seat and switched from the Congress to the BJP in August.
The BJP candidate polled 67,492 votes (51.32 per cent), while Prakash secured 51,752 votes (39.35 percent).
BIHAR
In Bihar's Mokama, RJD candidate Neelam Devi won by more than 16,000 votes. The by-poll was necessitated after the disqualification of her husband MLA Anant Kumar Singh.
However, the BJP retained the Gopalganj assembly seat in the state with its candidate Kusum Devi, wife of MLA Subhash Singh whose death had necessitated the by-election, polling 70,032 votes, while RJD's Mohan Gupta got 68,243.
Bihar saw the first electoral test for the Nitish Kumar-led 'Mahagathbandhan' government, formed less than three months ago after the JD(U) parted ways with the BJP.
The BJP contested from the Mokama constituency for the first time as the saffron party had, on previous occasions, left the seat to its allies.
MAHARASHTRA
Rutuja Latke, the candidate of the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) won the bypoll to Andheri (East) assembly seat in Mumbai by bagging more than 66,000 votes, followed by 12,806 votes polled in favour of the None Of The Above (NOTA) option.
Latke got 66,530 votes out of the total 86,570 votes. Besides Latke, six Independent candidates were in the fray.
The byelection, necessitated due to the death of sitting Shiv Sena MLA and Rutuja Latke's husband Ramesh Latke in May this year, was a mere formality after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) withdrew its candidate from the race.
This was the first electoral contest in Maharashtra after the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government collapsed in June following a revolt by a section of Shiv Sena MLAs led by Eknath Shinde.
TELANGANA
The ruling TRS won the high-voltage bypoll to Munugode assembly segment by over 10,000 votes. TRS candidate Kusukuntla Prabhakar Reddy, however, faced a tough fight from his nearest BJP rival Komatireddy Raj Gopal Reddy.
After completion of the 15 rounds of counting, the TRS candidate got 96,598 votes, while the BJP nominee secured 86,485 votes. In a setback to the Congress, party candidate Palvai Sravanthi, who obtained 23,864 votes, lost the security deposit.
Komatireddy Raj Gopal Reddy was with the Congress earlier and the election was necessitated after he resigned from the party in August.
Over 93 per cent polling was reported in the bypoll held on November 3.
The bypoll assumed immense political significance as it was seen as a virtual semi-final ahead of next year's Legislative Assembly polls in Telangana.
ODISHA
The BJP retained Odisha's Dhamnagar seat after its candidate Suryabanshi Suraj defeated his BJD rival Abanti Das by a margin of 9,881 votes. While Suraj secured 80,351 votes, Das got 70,470 votes.
Besides retaining the seat, the saffron party ended the ruling BJD's winning run in by-polls since 2019 when it came to power for the fifth consecutive term in the state.
The Dhamnagar seat fell vacant following the death of Suraj's father and BJP MLA Bishnu Charan Sethi in September.
At least 68.98 per cent of the constituency's 2,38,417 voters had cast their votes in 252 booths of Dhamnagar on November 3.
