The INDIA alliance, which has emerged confident after the Lok Sabha election results, has bagged nine out of the 13 assembly seats in the byelections across seven states. The elections are held in Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Bihar, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.
In Himachal Pradesh's Dehra, Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu's wife Kamlesh Thakur won in her electoral debut, crushing BJP's Hoshiyar Singh by a margin of 9,399 votes.
Nalagarh, another Himachal seat witnessing polls, saw Congress's Hardeep Singh Bawa winning by 8,990 votes over BJP's K.L. Thakur. BJP's Ashish Sharma defeated Congress's Pushpinder Verma by a narrow margin of 1,571 votes in Hamirpur, which is also in Himachal.
The three BJP candidates were independent MLAs who resigned after voting for the party in the Rajya Sabha polls a few months ago.
AAP's Mohinder Bhagat defeated nearest rival and BJP candidate Sheetal Angural by 37,325 votes in Jalandhar West of Punjab. The seat was vacated after Angural quit AAP and joined BJP.
Congress candidates Lakhpat Singh Butola and Qazi Nizamuddin defeated their BJP rivals in Badrinath and Manglaur respectively. Butola, in his electoral debut, wong against BJP candidate and three-time MLA Rajendra Singh Bhandari by a margin of 5,095 votes. Nizamuddin, a three-time MLA won against BJP's Kartar Singh Bhadana by a narrow 422 votes.
West Bengal had four seats going to the ballot for the bypolls. Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress saw all four of its candidates winning in the state, including Mukut Mani Adhikari in Ranaghat Dakshin, Krishna Kalyani in Raiganj, Madhupurna Thakur in Bagda and Supti Pandey in Maniktala.
In Bihar's Rupauli, independent candidate Shankar Singh was leading by 8,204 votes against JDU's Kaladhar Prasad Mandal.
Congress's Dheeran Shah was leading by 5,634 votes over BJP candidate Kamlesh Shah in Madhya Pradesh's Amarwara seat.
In Tamil Nadu, M.K. Stalin's DMK was leading in Vikravandi seat, where its Anniyur Siva aka A. Sivashanmugam was leading by a margin of 19,668 votes.
