Abhijay Raj Vaish, Pune
The opposition INDIA alliance secured a substantial victory claiming 10 out of the 13 seats in by-polls conducted across seven states on July 10. The incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) managed to secure two seats with one seat going to an independent candidate in Bihar. The by-polls were contested in Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Tamil Nadu, Bihar, Punjab, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh.
The Indian National Congress (INC) won both the constituencies of Badrinath and Manglaur in Uttarakhand while also clinching the Dehra and Nalagarh seats in Himachal Pradesh. The Manglaur seat was won by a thin margin of around 400 votes by Congress’s Qazi Mohammad Nizamuddin. The elections in West Bengal were contested in Raiganj, Bagda, Ranaghat Dakshin, and Maniktala where the INDIA bloc member Trinamool Congress (TMC) won all four seats while the Aam Aadmi Party clinched the Jalandhar West seat in Punjab by a margin of over 23000 votes. The Vikravandi constituency of Tamil Nadu was also contested where the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagham (DMK) claimed victory by an assertive margin of around 60000 votes.
The BJP faced a setback by only winning two of the 13 legislative assembly seats in Himachal Pradesh’s Hamirpur and the Amarwar seat in Madhya Pradesh. The Hamirpur seat was closely contested with BJP’s Ashish Sharma winning by a margin of 1571 votes against Congress’s Pushpinder Verma.
The Rupali Assembly seat in Bihar was claimed by Independent candidate Shankar Singh by a margin of 8246 votes against Kalandhar Mandal of Janata Dal (U).
The by-polls were held on Wednesday due to the deaths or resignations of the MLAs which were the first since the 2024 Lok Sabha elections where the BJP amassed 240 seats while the NDA coalition secured 293 surpassing the majority mark. Earlier, two seats each were held by the BJP, Congress, and TMC while regional parties such as Dravida Munnetra Kazhagham, Aam Aadmi Party, Janata Dal(U), and Bahujan Samaj Party held one seat each. The other three seats were held by independent candidates. Congress Chief Mallikarjun Kharge claimed the results to be a sign of the failing political strength of PM Modi and Amit Shah.