The Bharatiya Janata Party was defeated in all four assembly seats of Bengal, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and Bihar, as well as the Lok Sabha seat in West Bengal.
Trinamool wins Bengal bypolls
Trinamool Congress has won big in Asansol Lok Sabha and Ballygunge assembly seats, the most keenly watched among the five by-polls for which votes were counted Saturday.
Actor-politician Shatrughan Sinha, the Trinamool Congress’s candidate from Asansol Lok Sabha seat, won the bypoll with a huge margin, registering the party’s first-ever electoral victory in the constituency.
In the Ballygunge Assembly segment, Trinamool’s Babul Supriyo, who switched from the BJP, emerged a winner.
Mamata Banerjee has thanked voters for a “decisive mandate” on both seats. She added that the party considers this to be the people’s gift on the occasion of the Bengali New Year, which was celebrated Friday.
RJD wins Bochahan in Bihar
The Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) on Saturday won Bochahan Assembly seat — the lone constituency that went for bypolls in Bihar.
RJD candidate Amar Kumar Paswan secured 48.52 per cent votes to emerge as the winner, with BJP candidate Baby Kumari in the second.
The Bochahan assembly seat, reserved for Scheduled Caste candidates, in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur district fell vacant after the death of MLA Musafir Paswan who had won on the ticket of Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP) of Mukesh Sahani.
Congress wins in Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh
Congress candidate Jayshree Jadhav won the Kolhapur North Assembly bypoll in Maharashtra securing 54.25 per cent votes.
Jayshree Jadhav is the widow of Congress MLA Chandrakant Jadhav whose death in December last year necessitated the bypoll.
In Chhattisgarh’s Khairagarh Assembly bypoll, the ruling Congress’ Yashoda Nilamber Verma won by a margin of nearly 20,000 votes. The bypoll was necessitated by the death of Janta Congress Chhattisgarh (Jogi) MLA Devwrat Singh in November last year.
