 "BJP, allies win 7 out of 12 Assembly seats in bypolls")
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies won seven of 12 Assembly seats across eight states in bypolls on Sunday. The Janata Dal (United)-led coalition in Bihar, the Samajwadi Party establishment in Uttar Pradesh, and Karnataka's ruling Congress faced embarrassments.
The Samajwadi Party (SP) lost two of three seats that went for bypolls in Uttar Pradesh. In Karnataka, the ruling Congress lost two of three seats. In Bihar, the Congress lost in the Harlakhi constituency to the Rashtriya Loktantrik Samata Party (RLSP). The Congress is an ally of 'Janata Dal (United) and Rashtriya Janata Dal' government in Bihar, while the RLSP is an ally of the BJP.
In the other five states, ruling parties - BJP, Shiv Sena, Akali Dal, Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), and Communist Party of India (Marxist) - won a lone seat each in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab, Telangana, and Tripura, respectively.
While the CPI (M) retained the Birgunj seat in Tripura, the BJP candidate was the runner-up and the Congress was on the third spot. In Uttar Pradesh, the BJP won the Muzaffarnagar constituency. The Congress won the Deoband seat. The SP retained the Bikapur seat. Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections are due early next year.
In Muzaffarnagar, BJP's Kapil Dev Agarwal defeated SP's Gaurav Swarup by a margin of 7,352 votes. The win is a shot in the arm for the BJP, which had mounted a strident campaign on Hindutva issues ever since the communal riots of 2013 in the district. In Deoband, the seat of Islamic religious school, Darul Uloom, the Congress defeated the SP.
The opposition BJP in Karnataka, where Assembly elections are due in 2018, retained the Hebbal seat in Bengaluru by defeating the Congress. The two parties snatched each other's seats in Devadurga and Bidar. The Congress losers in Karnataka included C K Abdul Rahman Sharief, grandson of former railway minister C K Jaffer Sharief, who lost to BJP's Y A Narayanaswamy by a margin of 19,149 votes in Hebbal. Sharief was given the ticket at the last minute against the wishes of Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah.
In Madhya Pradesh, ruling BJP won the Maihar Assembly seat with party nominee Narayan Tripathi defeating Congress' Manish Patel by a margin of 27,544 votes. Tripathi had won the seat in 2013 on a Congress ticket but had later quit the party to join BJP during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
In Maharashtra, ruling alliance partner Shiv Sena retained the Palghar assembly seat. In Punjab, which also goes to polls next year, the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal won the by-poll to Khadoor Sahib assembly seat. Main opposition parties Congress and Aam Aadmi Party had stayed out of the contest.
In Telangana, continuing its winning spree since it rode to power in the 2014 assembly elections, the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi wrested Narayanakhed seat in Medak district from Congress with a massive margin of over 53,625 votes.
TRS candidate Bhupal Reddy polled 93,076 votes, while Congress's P Sanjeeva Reddy secured 39,451 votes and the TDP nominee Vijaypal Reddy, brother of Bhupal Reddy, got only 14,787 votes.
Welcoming the good performance of the BJP and its allies, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said "people across India reposed faith in politics of development, development & development."
