New Delhi: Despite a win in the minority-dominated Boxanagar in Tripura, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday received a major setback in the Assembly bypolls, losing at Dhupguri in West Bengal and Ghosi in Uttar Pradesh.
The BJP had fielded Dara Singh Chauhan, who won the seat by a margin of 22,216 seats contesting as an SP candidate in the 2022 UP assembly polls. Chauhan lost by 42,759 votes to the Samajwadi Party candidate supported by the Congress. In West Bengal, its defeat underlined further erosion in the party’s base in the state.
In terms of numbers, the BJP held three out of the seven seats where bypolls were held on 5 September, while the rest were in the Opposition fold. After the counting of votes, although the tally remained the same for both sides, the losses in Ghosi and Dhupguri will rankle the BJP as it counts Uttar Pradesh among its most prized states. In contrast, the party is on a downslide in West Bengal where it had put up a spirited fight in 2019 Lok Sabha and 2021 assembly elections.
For the Opposition, the victory in Ghosi will surely come as a boost at a time when efforts are underway to put up a united front against the BJP under the umbrella of the INDIA bloc in less than a year for the parliamentary election. Jharkhand Mukti Morcha’s (JMM) win in Dumri despite the BJP backing the AJSU candidate will also leave the Opposition camp happy.
SP candidate Sudhakar Singh’s victory in the Ghosi bypolls is also significant as the Opposition has been struggling to counter the BJP’s dominance in Uttar Pradesh ever since Yogi Adityanath took office in 2017. Singh defeated Dara Singh Chauhan, whose defection to the BJP necessitated the bypoll.
The Congress did not field any candidate in Ghosi, setting up a duel between the SP and the BJP, a template that the Opposition plans to replicate in “as many seats as possible” — as announced after the third meeting of the INDIA bloc in Mumbai earlier this month — in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls to prevent a split in anti-BJP votes.
The Ghosi mandate also underscored the further marginalisation of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which did not contest the seat this time. In the days leading to the polls, BSP supremo Mayawati, who announced that she will not align with either the INDIA bloc or the NDA, had urged her supporters to either abstain from voting or press the NOTA button.
However, the results showed that only a little over 1,400 votes went to NOTA. In the 2022 assembly polls, BSP had bagged a substantial vote share of 21.12 percent in Ghosi, which was won by Chauhan by a margin of 22,216 votes. The Congress polled merely 0.78 percent votes in Ghosi in the last election.
Nevertheless, a Congress candidate in the fray could have prevented the SP from getting the full backing of the Dalits, who traditionally backed the BSP in this seat located in Mau district.
As for Bagheshwar, the BJP managed to retain the seat in Uttarakhand, albeit with a smaller margin.
In the 2022 Uttarakhand election, BJP’s Chandan Ram Das, who won Bageshwar three consecutive times, won the seat for the fourth time by defeating his Congress rival by a margin of 12,141 votes. The Aam Aadmi Party had polled 16,109 votes, which cost the Congress the seat.
The AAP was not in the fray in the bypolls necessitated due to Das’s death. The BJP fielded Parwati Dass, the late MLA’s widow, while the Congress made Basant Kumar, who contested on an AAP ticket the last time, its candidate.
Though the SP also fielded a candidate, the party failed to make any dent with only 637 votes cast in its favour. It was up from the 508 it polled last time.
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Sweet and sour for party in east, northeast
The result of Dhupguri was a major setback for the BJP in West Bengal, where six of its 77 MLAs have so far shifted to the TMC.
The verdict also stamped the primacy of the TMC, which won by a margin of 4,309 votes. In March, the TMC lost to the Congress in the Sagardighi assembly bypoll. Later, however, the Congress MLA, Bayron Biswas, joined the TMC.
The Left-Congress combine, which had fielded a common candidate in Dhupguri even in the 2021 assembly polls, came a cropper once again. In 2021, a major factor for the BJP’s win by a margin of 4,355 votes was the fact that the Congress-backed CPI(M) candidate had polled 13,107 votes, in an apparent split of anti-BJP votes.
This time, the joint candidate, also of the CPI(M), polled 13758 votes cast. On 1 September, as the INDIA bloc met in Mumbai, the Left-Congress held a joint rally led by CPI(M) state secretary Mohammed Salim and Congress state chief Adhir Chowdhury in Dhupguri, leaving the TMC seething.
In neighbouring Jharkhand’s Dumri, the AJSU, powered by support from the BJP which did not contest this time, put up a spirited fight against the JMM. However, the JMM won the seat by 17,153 votes.
At Kerala’s Puthuppally where a bypoll was necessitated due to the death of it sitting MLA and Congress stalwart Oommen Chandy, his son Chandy Oommen scored a big victory, finishing 37,719 votes ahead of his nearest rival CPI(M)’s Jaick C. Thomas.
Tripura’s minority-dominated Boxanagar seat gave a surprise result in this round of bypolls. The seat, which had been with the Left since 2003, went to the BJP with a vote share of 50.21 percent.
Even in the assembly polls this year, CPI(M)’s Samsul Haque had a vote share of 50.34 per cent. After Haque’s sudden death, the CPI(M) fielded his son Mizan Hussain who got 3,909 votes that translates to 10.07 percent of the total vote share. The BJP had fielded Tafajjal Hossain.
The BJP also retained Dhanpur, where elections had to be held again as Union Minister Pratima Bhowmik was asked by the party to keep her Lok Sabha seat. The CPI(M) had demanded re-poll in both seats, alleging widespread poll rigging and intimidation of voters by BJP workers.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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