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The Congress retained the Puthuppally assembly seat in Kerala which had fallen vacant after the death of former state Chief Minister Oomen Chandy. Chandy’s son Chandy Oomen , a Youth Congress leader, was the Congress candidate.

Dr Satish Misra

In bye elections held in seven states on September 5, whose results were announced on September 8, the opposition alliance INDIA won four seats while the BJP managed three victories.

Results clearly established that the opposition alliance INDIA is going to be a credible challenger to the BJP led National Democratic Alliance in not only coming assembly elections but also in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

Poll outcome in Jharkhand, Kerala, Tripura, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal showed that the NDA led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi is turning vulnerable at places where the contest is one to one like in Ghosi where the BJP candidate was trounced by a convincing margin of 42, 759 votes by the Samajwadi Party. No wonder Akhilesh Yadav is elated and has welcomed the result as a victory of INDIA. This result should help a lot in recovering lost ground for the Indian National Congress in the most populous state of the country.

In an yet another direct fight in Dumri assembly seat in Kharkhand, the JMM’s candidate Bebi Devi defeated the BJP candidate Yahoda Devi by a margin of 17, 153 votes. The Dumri bypoll had been necessitated by the death of JMM sitting MLA and a minister in Chief Minister Hemant Soren’s government Jagarnath Mahato.

The Congress retained Puthuppally assembly seat in Kerala which had fallen vacant after the death of former state Chief Minister Oomen Chandy. Chandy’s son Chandy Oomen , a Youth Congress leader, was the Congress candidate.

Young Chandy won the seat by a margin of over 37000 votes defeating CPM candidate Jaick Thomas. The contest was between two traditional alliances namely the UDF and the LDF which have alternatively been in power for over four decades. The BJP was hoping that its candidate Ligin Lal, who had polled about 10 percent votes in the 2021 assembly elections would give a tough fight as the party had harped on the point that since both the LDF and UDF were part of the INDIA alliance, electorate would prefer its candidate. Lign ended up with only 6486 votes crashing hopes of the saffron party.

Ruling Trinamool Congress wrested Dhupguri assembly seat from the BJP in West Bengal. In a three cornered contest, TMC’s Nirmal Chandra Roy defeated BJP’s candidate by 4883 votes with the Congress backed CPM candidate Ishwar Chandra Roy getting 13666 votes. In 2021 assembly elections, the BJP’s Bishnupada Roy had won the seat by 4335 votes.

Message from West Bengal is clear that it is going to be tough for the BJP if there are one to one contests in the state whose possibility is strong. The BJP had won 18 seats in 2019 general elections in a four cornered contest between the TMC, BJP, Congress and the CPM.

Even if three parties namely the TMC, the Congress and the CPM are not able to reach an electoral understanding, alliance leaders would make sure that there are one to one contests in majority of the 42 Lok Sabha seats by ensuring a tactical understanding.

What is particularly encouraging is that even though the Congress and CPM were in the field for their political survival reasons Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee who was one of the architects of the name INDIA (along with Rahul Gandhi) hauled the results as a victory for INDIA.

The BJP won Dhanpur and Boxanagar assembly seats in Tripura. In Dhanpur bypoll, that had been necessitated by the resignation of the BJP’s Pratima Bhoumik from the seat, after she chose to continue as an MP and Union Minister of State. The Boxanagar bye- election had to be held due to the passing away of the CPM MLA Samsul Haque. The CPM had fielded Haque’s son Mohd Mijan Hossain who lost to BJP’s candidate Taffajjal Hossain who was a runner up in assembly elections held six months earlier.

For BJP the other victory came in the hilly state of Uttarakhand’s Bageshwar seat where its candidate Parwati Dass defeated Congress candidate Basant Kumar by a margin of 2405 votes. The seat had fallen vacant because of the death of BJP’s four time MLA and cabinet minister Ram Das in April this year. All the three seats were held by the BJP before they fell vacant.

Taking a closer look at the results and analyzing it further, one cannot but reach a conclusion that the NDA is going to face an uphill task in winning a comfortable majority in the Lok Sabha elections next year as it did in 2019 when it won 353 seats with the BJP alone winning 303 seats. In fact, the BJP had been able to improve its tally by winning 21 seats more than it had in 2014.

In the last general elections, majority of the opposition leaders were convinced that their respective parties were strong on their turfs and there was no need for them to wage a united battle against the BJP. The opposition parties were correct to a large extent but no opposition leader had taken Pulwama tragedy into account while assessing the political situation on ground. Death of 40 CRPF soldiers when a convoy carrying security forces personnel was attacked by a vehicle borne suicide bomber had shocked the nation. Retaliatory attack by the Indian Air Force created a massive wave of sympathy for the ruling party and Prime Minister Narendra Modi that resulted in the BJP’s victory at the polls.

In between, ground political situation is changing fast with price rise, unemployment.

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New Delhi, 18, September 2023

The Congress retained the Puthuppally assembly seat in Kerala which had fallen vacant after the death of former state Chief Minister Oomen Chandy. Chandy’s son Chandy Oomen , a Youth Congress leader, was the Congress candidate.

Dr Satish Misra