The Election Commission has declared results for most of the 51 Assembly bye-elections that took place on Monday.
The Bharatiya Janata Party won five seats in Uttar Pradesh, two each in Himachal Pradesh, Assam and Sikkim, and one in Gujarat. The Congress bagged three seats in Punjab, two each in Gujarat and Kerala, and one each in Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Puducherry.
The bye-elections to 51 Assembly seats and two Lok Sabha constituencies across 17 states and one Union Territory took place on Monday. Thirty of the 51 Assembly seats were earlier held by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, 12 by the Congress and the rest by regional parties.
Samajwadi Party candidate Tazeen Fatima defeated the BJP’s Bharat Bhushan by 7,716 votes in the Rampur Assembly constituency of Uttar Pradesh. The bye-election was needed after Fatima’s husband Azam Khan, who held the seat earlier, got elected to the Lok Sabha in May.
In Bihar, the BJP and alliance partner Janata Dal (United) lost four out of the five Assembly seats. The All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen, or AIMIM, won a seat for the first time in the Bihar Assembly after its candidate in Kishanganj, Qamrul Hoda, defeated Sweety Singh of the BJP by 10,204 votes.
In Gujarat, former Congress leaders Alpesh Thakor and Dhavalsinh Zala, who switched their allegiance and moved to the Bharatiya Janata Party in July, were set to lose their Assembly seats in the bye-elections.
Uttar Pradesh had 11 Assembly bye-polls, the most among all states. This was followed by six seats in Gujarat, five each in Bihar and Kerala, four each in Assam and Punjab, three in Sikkim, two each in Himachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan, and one seat each in Arunachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Puducherry, Meghalaya and Telangana.
Apart from this, Lok Sabha bye-polls for the Satara seat in Maharashtra and Samastipur in Bihar were also held on Monday. In Satara, the Nationalist Congress Party looked set to retain the seat as three-time MP Udayanraje Bhosale, who switched over from the Sharad Pawar-led party to the Bharatiya Janata Party last month, trailed by a huge margin.
Also read: Bye-election battle: What you need to know about 51 seats across 17 states that went to polls
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