Bypolls to be held in 54 seats on Tuesday after campaign around 'traitor', 'love jihad' and 'item'

In what could be a reflection of the national political mood, 54 Assembly constituencies across 10 states including 28 in Madhya Pradesh, eight in Gujarat, seven in Uttar Pradesh, two each in Jharkhand, Karnataka, Nagaland, and Odisha, and one each in Chhattisgarh, Haryana, and Telangana will go to polls on Tuesday.

The BJP is in power in five of the states, Congress, BJD, JMM, TRS and Democratic Alliance of Nagaland are ruling one each. Congress is also part of JMM alliance in Jharkhand, while BJP is part of the alliance in Nagaland.

Bypolls have generally not brought good news for the BJP since 2017.

So, the elections in all these states are being watched as indicators of popularity of the respective governments, especially in Uttar Pradesh, which has been in news for all the wrong reasons, including the Hathras incident in recent times. Seven Assembly seats of the most populous state of the country are going to polls Tuesday.

While the results will have no bearing on the stability of the Yogi Adityanath government, it will determine the course of Opposition politics in the state. Six of these seats were held by the BJP and one by the Samajwadi Party.

UP bypolls will also be the first electoral test for Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar Azad's new political party Azad Samaj Party, which has fielded a Muslim candidate from Bulandshahr.

Former Cricketer late Chetan Chauhan's wife Sangeeta is contesting from Naugaon Sadat, which had fallen vacant after her husband's death due to Covid-19. Bypoll on another seat Ghatampur is also to be contested due to the death of cabinet minister Kamal Rani Varun, while one more seat fell vacant following the conviction of Kuldeep Singh Sengar in a rape case.

Read: UP bypolls: Fate of 88 candidates to be decided on November 3

For a month before the polls, the issue of "love jihad" is back in political discourse of BJP and VHP, with a greater prominence in UP, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. At least two BJP Chief Ministers--Yogi Adityanath (UP) and Manoharlal Khattar (Haryana) talked of bringing a law to curb "love jihad", a connotation used by BJP and VHP to suggest luring of Hindu girls for marriage by Muslims with an eye on conversion.

A unique feature of this poll is that the BJP, which is the ruling party in Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Karnataka, have fielded former Congress MLAs in nearly three dozen seats, who had earlier quit their parent party under sort of Operation Kamala (Lotus) by the BJP.

It will be the first time in Madhya Pradesh that bypolls are being held in 28 seats in one go. 25 of them are seats from where Congress MLAs resigned in favour of Scindia as the later switched sides. The outcome here will determine the continuance of Shivraj Singh Chouhan-led BJP government and the political future of Jyotiraditya Scindia within the BJP.

The BJP has 107 MLAs and needs nine more seats for a majority, while the Congress has 87 legislators in the House and such bouncing back to form a government again is a tall task for Congress.

With Scindia crossing over to the BJP, Congress lost government in one of the three states it had won in 2018, the other two being Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan. Congress had won MP and Chhattisgarh after a gap of 15 years and hence, the MP loss rankled it more, which was evident in the vitriolic nature of the election campaign that concluded on Sunday.

The Election Commission reprimanded leaders of both parties and took the extreme action of revoking the star campaigner status of former CM Kamal Nath, an order which was stayed by the Supreme Court on Monday. Nath had evoked the ire of EC for using the word "item" during campaigning against BJP candidate Imarti Devi, which had evoked outrage on social media as well for being sexist.

A sign of the high political tempers was also visible when BJP and Congress workers clashed in bypoll-bound Badnawar in Dhar district in the early hours of Monday.

The old guards of Congress - Kamal Nath and Digvijaya Singh have left no stone unturned during the campaigning to turn the tables on Scindia in this election with the Congress calling Scindia and deserting MLAs as 'gaddar' (traitors).

Even in Gujarat, the bypolls in eight seats are necessitated after Congress MLAs resigned, five of whom are contesting this time as BJP candidates. They had resigned ahead of the Rajya Sabha polls held in June this year.

Read: High stake bypolls in Gujarat to eight Assembly seats

The Congress is betting big on new entrant Hardik Patel, the leader from the influential Patidar community who was made party working president only this year.

In one seat in Jharkhand, Chief Minister Hemant Soren's younger brother Basant Soren is contesting in Dumka, where a sedition case was registered against Jharkhand BJP chief and Rajya Sabha MP Deepak Prakash two days ago on the allegation of trying to destabilise the JMM-Congress-RJD government. On the eve of the poll, the Chief Minister raised the bogey of a scholarship scam when Louis Marandi (BJP candidate) was welfare minister in previous BJP government.

The assembly by-poll for lone seat Dubbak in Telangana turned murkier on Sunday with seizure of unaccounted cash worth Rs 1 crore from a relative of the BJP candidate.

In Congress-ruled Chhattisgarh, two MLAs of the Janata Congress Chhattisgarh (J), founded by late Ajit Jogi, came out against the party's decision to support the BJP's nominee in the Marwahi bypoll, which could bring smiles to the ruling party there. The seat had fallen vacant due to Jogi's death this year. In 2018, Jogi had defeated the BJP candidate there.

In Karnataka, one of the two seats RR Nagar, which was earlier held by the BJP, was won in last election by then Congress candidate Munirathna. Now Munirathna is a candidate from the BJP, while the Congress has fielded H Kusuma, wife of a former IAS officer late D K Ravi. for the seat. Ally-turned-foe JD(S) can further compound the problems for Congress.

Read: Over 40,000 fake voters in RR Nagar: DK Shivakumar

In two seats in Odisha, it seems a straight fight between the ruling BJD and the BJP, which had won one each in 2019 state polls.