Congress wins one LS, five Assembly seats in bypolls

The Congress party today won five Assembly and one Lok Sabha seat in the byelections held for two Parliamentary and 11 Assembly seats in 11 states.

The party wrested the Bobbili Lok Sabha seat from the TDP, but the margin for the winner, B Jhansi Rani, was just 115 votes. This led to some tension in the constituency as TDP leader Chandrababu Naidu petitioned the local state Election Commission officials for "justice".

The Karimnagar Lok Sabha seat predictably re-returned K Chandrasekhar Rao, former labour minister who quit Lok Sabha and the UPA government in protest against the Congress stance on the issue of Telengana.

Congress shocked the BJP in the Kota Assembly by-election in Chhattisgarh by winning it and putting former Chief Minister Ajit Jogi on the comeback trail. The seat went to the ex-CM's wife Renu Jogi.

But in Manihari, Bihar, the party was shocked by Janata Dal (U) whose candidate defeated the son of the sitting Congress candidate, Mobarak Hussain, who had died.

The Chamundeswari Assembly constituency in Karnataka, which saw a bitter fight between the ruling HD Deve Gowda-led Janata Dal (S) and defector former Deputy Chief Minister Siddaramiah, was won by the latter. But the margin was just 257 votes. The state government had put all its might in the effort to defeat "a disloyal" colleague.

In the North-East, Congress lost two seats it had held earlier, pointing to the serious loss of political ground it is facing in a sensitive part of India.

But the Congress had reason to be jubilant in Maharashtra. The party won both the Chimur and Daryapur Assembly seats which were vacated by sitting Shiv Sena MLAs who resigned and joined the Congress under the leadership of Revenue Minister Narayan Rane.

Some results were predictable: the Islampur Assembly seat in West Bengal was retained by the CPI(M) as was the Pandhana seat in Madhya Pradesh by the BJP. The Dungarpur seat in Rajasthan was retained by the Congress where the BJP was defeated by a convincing 10,000 margin.

The ruling Left Democratic Front defeated the UDF retaining the Thiruvambadi Assembly seat in Kozhikode. However, the victory margin was just 246 votes.