Delhi: Things are not looking good for the saffron party on a day when votes were counted for bypolls in 11 (including RR Nagar, Bengaluru) Assembly constituencies and four Lok Sabha constituencies.
The Lok Sabha constituencies where counting is taking place are Kairana (Uttar Pradesh), Bhandara-Gondia and Palghar (Maharashtra) and Nagaland parliamentary constituency, and the 10 assembly seats are Palus Kadegaon (Maharashtra), Noorpur (Uttar Pradesh), Jokihat (Bihar), Gomia and Silli (Jharkhand), Chengannur (Kerala), Ampati (Meghalaya), Shahkot (Punjab), Tharali (Uttarakhand) and Maheshtala (West Bengal).
RR Nagar where election was withheld due to voters’ card controversy has also polled on Monday. The BJP, despite their marauding run across the country in Assembly elections have faced reverses in bypolls, most recently in Uttar Pradesh’s Gorakhpur and Phulpur and Bihar’s Araria.
Since the 2014 General Elections, the party has managed only four of the 23 Lok Sabha bypolls. In contrast, the Congress has won five of these bypoll battles – more than any other party. And things don’t look good for the BJP today as things stand.
In the Kairana bypoll, the RLD candidate is miles ahead of BJP’s Mriganka Singh. In a show of Opposition unity, as a dress rehearsal for the 2019 election, the Congress, BSP and SP had all supported the RLD candidate Tabassum Hasan. The BJP is comfortably leading in Palghar in Maharashtra and is leading by a slim margin in Bhandara-Goninda.
The Congress is well ahead in assembly seats in Shahkot (Punjab), Tharali (Uttarkhand), Ampati (Meghalaya) and RR Nagar (Karnataka). The Congress has also won the Palus Kadegaon Assembly constituency after no other candidate contested.
The RJD is leading in Jokihat (Bihar), while SP is leading in Noorpur (SP). In Bengal, Mamata’s TMC seems to have comfortably wrested back the Maheshthala seat.