The Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday lost five out of seven bye-elections held for state Assemblies and one Lok Sabha seat.
The saffron party lost the Mainpuri Lok Sabha constituency in Uttar Pradesh, as well as the Khatauli Assembly seat in the state. The party’s candidates also finished second in the Assembly constituencies of Bhanupratappur in Chhattisgarh, Padampur in Odisha and Sardarshahar in Rajasthan.
The BJP, however, won in the Kurhani Assembly constituency of Bihar and in Rampur constituency of Uttar Pradesh.
Polling for all the seats were held on December 5.
Uttar Pradesh
The Samajwadi Party and its ally, the Rashtriya Lok Dal, have won one each of three electoral contests in Uttar Pradesh.
In the Mainpuri parliamentary constituency, the Samajwadi Party’s Dimple Yadav won against the BJP’s Raghuraj Singh Shakya by a massive margin of 2,88,461 votes.
“I want to thank all the supporters of the Samajwadi Party who worked rigorously for our victory,” Yadav said after the result was declared, according to ANI. “I also want to thank the people of Mainpuri for believing in me. This victory is a tribute to Netaji [Late Mulayam Singh Yadav].”
The Mainpuri seat fell vacant after the death of Samajwadi Party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav on October 10. Dimple Yadav is the daughter-in-law of Mulayam Singh Yadav and the wife of Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav.
Meanwhile, the Rashtriya Lok Dal’s Madan Bhaiya won from the Assembly constituency of Khatauli against the BJP’s Rajkumari by a margin of 22,143 votes. The bye-election was held due to the conviction of BJP MLA Vikram Singh Saini in a case about the riots that took place in the Muzaffarnagar district in 2013.
However, in Rampur, the BJP’s Akash Saxena won against Samajwadi Party’s Mohammed Asim Raja by 34,136 votes. The bye-poll was necessitated by the conviction of former Samajwadi Party MLA Azam Khan in a hate speech case from 2019.
Bihar
In the Kurhani Assembly constituency of Bihar’s Muzaffarpur district, the BJP’s Kedar Prasad Gupta won against the Janata Dal (United)’s Manoj Kumar Singh by 3,649 votes.
The bye-election took place as Rashtriya Janata Dal MLA Anil Kumar Sahani was disqualified after he was sentenced to jail in a fraud case.
Chhattisgarh
The Congress’ Savitri Mandavi won by 21,171 votes against the BJP’s Brahmanand Netam in the Bhanupratappur constituency in Chhattisgarh’s Maoist-hit Kanker district.
The bye-election was necessitated by the death of Congress MLA and Deputy Speaker Manoj Singh Mandavi in November. Savitri Mandavi is the former MLA’s wife. The seat is reserved for Scheduled Tribes.
Odisha
In the Padampur constituency in the district of Bargarh, the Biju Janata Dal’s Barsha Singh won against BJP’s Pradeep Purohit by a margin of 42,679 votes.
The bye-election was held due to the death of Biju Janata Dal leader Bijay Ranjan Singh Bariha. Barsha Singh Bariha is the daughter of the former BJD MLA.
Rajasthan
The Congress’ Anil Kumar Sharma defeated BJP’s Ashok Kumar in the Sardarshahar Assembly constituency by 26,852 votes, data from the Election Commission showed.
The Sardarshahar seat in Rajasthan fell vacant after Congress MLA Bhanwar Lal Sharma died on October 9 after a prolonged illness. Anil Kumar Sharma is the son of the former Congress MLA.
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