Bypolls bring cheer to Opposition camp, BJP did not win a single seat

Bypolls to four Assembly seats and a Parliamentary constituency brought cheers to the Opposition camp on Saturday as the non-NDA parties won all the five contests decisively with the Congress and the RJD gaining one each seat from their rivals.

Trinamool Congress won the Asansol Parliamentary bypoll as well as Ballygunge Assembly polls while Congress won its sitting Kolhapur North seat in Maharashtra Assembly and managed to grab the Khairagarh Assembly seat in Chhattisgarh, which was earlier represented by Janata Congress Chhattisgarh (J).

RJD won the Bochahan assembly seat, increasing its numbers in Bihar Assembly. The seat was held by Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP), which was pushed to the third.

Trinamool Congress' candidates Shatrughnan Sinha won the Asansol Parliamentary constituency by beating BJP's Agnimitra Paul, a fashion designer, by 3.03 lakh votes while Babul Supriyo, who resigned as BJP's Asansol MP and joined the Mamata Banerjee-led party, won the Ballygunge Assembly bypoll beating CPI(M)'s Saira Shah Halim by 20,228 votes.

Read | BJP loses Asansol, TMC loses Muslim votes in Kolkata

The Ballygunge bypoll was necessitated by the death of Minister Subrata Mukherjee and there is strong buzz that Supriyo may be inducted into Mamata's ministerial team. Interestingly, the results are also bringing cheers to the CPI(M), which got around 36 per cent votes and emerged as the main rival to the Trinamool in Ballygunge.

Both the BJP and the Congress had reasons to be unhappy about the results. BJP was pushed to a dismal third in Ballygunge while Congress could not manage an impressive fight in the bypolls in West Bengal.

Bihar's Bochahan assembly seat brought happy news to the RJD as its candidate Amar Kumar Paswan (82,562 votes) convincingly defeated BJP's Baby Kumari (45,909) by over 36,653 votes while pushing VIP's Geeta Kumari (29,279) to the third. The sitting seat of VIP -- an erstwhile ally of BJP -- fell vacant after the death of its MLA Musafir Paswan.

Congress also managed to retain Kolhapur North seat, seat which fell vacant following the death of Chandrakant Jadhav due to Covid-19, and the results come as a boost to the Maha Vikas Agadhi (MVA) government, as the BJP had attempted to polarise the polls. During the bypoll campaign, the MNS had raised the issue of removing loudspeakers at mosques.

While a section of the Shiv Sena cadre were upset with the Sena ceding the seat to the Congress, Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray had addressed a virtual rally to tie the loose ends. Congress fielded Jayashree Jadhav, the wife of the late MLA, who trounced BJP's Satyajit Kadam by 19,307 votes.

In Chhattisgarh, which will go to polls next year, Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel got a shot in the arm with a victory in Khairagarh Assembly seat in naxal-hit Rajnandgaon district by over 20,000 votes. Congress' Yashoda Verma won the bypoll, which was necessitated after Janata Congress Chhattisgarh (J) MLA Devvrat Singh died in November last year.

Though it is a sitting seat of the late Ajit Jogi-founded JCC(J), it was not in the electoral pitch. The JCJ has barely managed to garner a little over 1,200 votes.

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