BJP gets a lead with 4 wins in bypoll, 1 win each for Sena, TRS, RJD

Last updated on November 8th, 2022 at 09:28 am

Before high stake assembly elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, the BJP has received a boost in the bypolls to seven assembly constituencies in six states. The national party has retained the three seats that it had in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Odisha, and took one from the Congress in Haryana.

The most critical contest was in Telangana’s Munugode assembly seat, where Congress MLA K Raj Gopal Reddy had resigned to join the BJP, forcing the bypoll. The Congress was wiped out in the bypoll as its candidate Palvai Sravanthi Reddy failed to save her deposit. Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra, that was in Telangana, couldn’t even save the seat for Congress despite claiming a huge support in the state.

The TRS and BJP had pulled out all the stops to win the bypoll, with the high decibel campaign eventually ending in an unprecedented 93 per cent polling. The counting of votes was a see-saw affair, with the TRS and BJP trading leads. It was only after the fifth round that the TRS started pulling ahead, as reported by The Indian Express. The tally at the end of counting stood at 97,006 votes for the TRS, 86,697 for the BJP and 23,906 for the Congress.

In Maharashtra, Rutuja Latke, the Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray candidate won the Andheri (East) assembly bypoll by a huge margin by bagging around 77 per cent of the total votes. The BJP here had withdrawn its candidate, as Latke, the wife of late Shiv Sena MLA Ramesh Latke was a clear winner. While Latke’s nearest rival Rajesh Tripathi got only 1,571 votes (1.8%), the None Of The Above (NOTA) option surprisingly got 12,806 votes (14.8%).

In Bihar, the BJP managed to retain Gopalganj while the RJD retained Mokama. However, both the parties saw decreased victory margins. In Uttar Pradesh, BJP’s Aman Giri has defeated SP’s Vinay Tiwari by a margin of 34,298 votes in Gola Gokarannath assembly seat in Lakhimpur Kheri district.