Assembly bypolls cheer for BJP, Congress

The results to the bypolls for nine legislative assembly seats across seven states have given opportunities in equal measure to rivals Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Congress to exult.

The BJP won five of the nine seats, the Congress bagged three and Trinamool Congress one.

Apart from Delhi, where the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) lost a seat it had held, the other results largely followed the trend of ruling parties retaining seats in bypolls. Polling for these was on Sunday. The bypolls were part of the Election Commission's effort to fill all vacant assembly and Lok Sabha seats before the presidential elections in July.

With Delhi scheduled for its civic polls on April 23, the result of the Rajouri Garden assembly seat was interpreted as evidence of a BJP resurgence. The three elected municipal bodies in Delhi are currently ruled by the BJP, while the AAP runs the Delhi government. The BJP-Shiromani Akali Dal joint candidate won Rajouri Garden, handsomely won by AAP in the 2015 assembly election. In fact, the AAP candidate lost his security deposit, while the Congress recovered in vote share and its candidate came second. The Congress was decimated in the 2015 assembly poll in Delhi but has worked since to recover the support base it had lost to AAP.

In Rajasthan, the BJP won the Dholpur assembly seat. Its candidate, Shobha Rani, defeated the Congress candidate by 38,678 votes. The seat was earlier held by her husband, B L Kushwah, who had won on a Bahujan Samaj Party ticket in 2013. He had to quit after he was convicted and awarded life imprisonment in a murder case; the BJP fielded his wife.

The victory will be a shot in the arm for Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, said to be facing anti-incumbency in the state. There is political speculation that she might be taken into the Union Cabinet.

Good news for the Congress came from Karnataka, where assembly elections are due in May 2018 and the opposition BJP seems on an upsurge. The ruling Congress retained both the seats that went to poll, Nanjangud and Gundlupet. The wins could help Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, who spent the last eight days campaigning in both, to consolidate his position within the party.

In Congress-ruled Himachal Pradesh, which goes to polls at the end of the year, the BJP retained the Bhoranj assembly seat. In Madhya Pradesh, the ruling BJP retained the Bandhavgarh seat, while the Congress retained Ater, where its candidate defeated that of the BJP by a slim 857 votes.

In West Bengal, the ruling Trinamool retained the Kanthi Dakshin seat. The BJP candidate was runner-up, with the Congress and Communist Party of India (CPI) candidates at number three and four. The Trinamool victory margin was a substantial 42,526 votes but the BJP's vote share was 31 per cent, three times the eight per cent in 2016.

In Assam, the ruling BJP retained the Dhemaji seat. Its Ranoj Pegu defeated the Congress' candidate by 9,285 votes, getting 75,217 votes to the Congress' 65,932.