Four months after its stupendous success in the Lok Sabha elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) suffered a setback in the by-polls conducted in 33 Assembly and three Lok Sabha seats across nine States.
The BJP and its allies — the TDP and the Apna Dal — had held 26 of the 33 Assembly seats before the by-election. After Tuesday’s results, the BJP was left with only 13 of those seats.
There were no surprises in the Lok Sabha by-polls for Mainpuri (UP), Vadodara (Gujarat) and Medak (Telangana) seats which the Samajwadi Party, the BJP, and the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) won, respectively.
While the BJP managed to retain Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home constituency, Vadodara, it lost heavily in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and even in Gujarat where the Congress managed to win three of the nine Assembly constituencies in the by-polls held on September 13.
The Congress’s best performance was in Rajasthan where it managed to wrest three of the four Assembly seats — Surajgarh, Weir and Nasirabad. The BJP, which had swept all the 25 Lok Sabha seats in the State, could retain only Kota (south).
For the BJP, the shocker came in Uttar Pradesh where the party lost eight of the 11 Assembly seats it had won in 2012. By-elections were necessitated in these seats as all the MLAs have got elected to the Lok Sabha.
Mulayam Singh Yadav’s grand-nephew, Tej Pratap Yadav of the Samajwadi Party, won the Mainpuri Lok Sabha seat with a staggering margin of 3,21,149 votes.
UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, who has been facing flak for the worsening law and order situation and the rampant corruption in the State, said the elections signalled a “defeat of the communal and divisive forces”.
Significantly, the ruling coalition at the Centre lost the Rohaniya Assembly segment in the Prime Minister’s Varanasi Lok Sabha constituency. The seat was held by BJP’s ally, the Apna Dal.
The only solace for the BJP came from West Bengal where it won the Basirhat Dakshin constituency for the first time. The ruling Trinamool Congress retained the Chowringhee seat.