Trinamool aced the Asansol poll test for the first time through its new celebrity recruit Shatrughan Sinha, whose victory by a margin of more than three lakh votes harked back to his cult status in the coal belt after his turn as Mangal Singh in the 1979 blockbuster ‘Kaala Patthar’. BJP candidate Agnimitra Paul lost even on her home turf Asansol (South), which had elected her to the assembly less than a year ago. BJP won in six of the seven assembly segments.
TMC’s seat count in the Lok Sabha now stands at 23 while its tally in the assembly remains constant at 211. Ex-BJP MP and Union minister of state Babul Supriyo, who joined Mamata after quitting the saffron party last September and the Asansol seat a month later, made a successful assembly debut, defeating CPM’s Saira Shah Halim in Ballygunge by a little over 20,000 votes. BJP’s Keya Ghosh was a distant third, getting less than half the votes the runner-up got in keeping with the trend seen in the urban local body polls earlier this year.
In Bihar, RJD’s Amar Kumar Paswan defeated BJP nominee Baby Kumari by 36,000-odd votes in the Bochaha assembly bypoll. “The people of Bochaha are suffering due to unemployment, price rise and poor education, healthcare and law and order. They have defeated the arrogance of NDA’s double-engine government,” RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav tweeted in Hindi.
While Paswan secured 48.5% of the votes polled, Baby got 26.9. Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP) candidate Geeta Kumari, daughter of former minister and nine-time MLA Ramai Ram, finished third.
The bypoll was necessitated by the death of VIP MLA Musafir Paswan, father of winning candidate Amar. The Mukesh Sahani-led VIP was part of NDA in Bihar until the party chief spoke out against the saffron party and fielded candidates on his own in the UP assembly polls. BJP got all 3 VIP MLAs to merge with it and then ensured Sahani’s ouster from the Nitish Kumar government.
Despite being relegated to the third position, Sahani celebrated the Bochaha result by distributing sweets among his supporters in Patna for ensuring BJP’s defeat. “We happily accept the verdict… We have achieved our goal. By defeating an arrogant party, the people of Bochaha have once again proved that arrogance has no place in democracy,” he told TOI.
Congress’s twin triumphs came in Kolhapur North, where its candidate Jayashri Jadhav became the constituency’s first woman representative in the Maharashtra assembly, and Khairagarh, where its former block president Yashoda Verma ensured the party’s third consecutive bypoll victory in Chhattisgarh since coming to government in 2018 under CM Bhupesh Baghel’s leadership.
In Kolhapur North, talk of a rift in the Shiv Sena-led MVA had little impact on Congress’s march as Jadhav defeated BJP nominee Satyajeet Kadam by over 19,000 votes. The manner of Verma’s Khairagarh victory was similar, with BJP’s Komal Janghel, a former legislator, losing to her by over 20,000 votes.
The Kohlapur seat used to be held by Jadhav’s late husband Chandrakant Jadhav. Leaders of the MVA said similar joint efforts by the coalition would help it defeat BJP nationally as well as in future state elections. Kolhapur’s guardian minister and Congress member Satej Patil said, “Everyone played their part. Every leader of the Shiv Sena, Congress, Nationalist Congress Party and other smaller parties fought as if they were themselves contesting. Chief minister Uddhav Thackeray’s strong message helped galvanise Sena support behind the Congress candidate.”
On the last day of the campaign, Shiv Sena chief and CM Uddhav had caused a stir by alleging that BJP clandestinely supported Congress in the 2019 assembly election, which led to the defeat of Sena’s two-time MLA Rajesh Kshirsagar. He said Sena would support Congress openly this time.
State BJP president Chandrakant Patil, who is from Kolhapur, said his party accepted the mandate. “We have garnered huge votes despite three parties contesting together against us. We will introspect the causes of defeat. I must appreciate that MVA constituents worked hard together.”
The Khairagarh assembly seat in Chhattisgarh had fallen vacant following the death of JCC-J legislator Devwrat Singh, scion of the erstwhile royal family of Khairagarh and a former Congress MP and MLA. In 2018, he contested as a candidate for JCC, a regional party floated by the state’s first chief minister Ajit Jogi, and won by a slender margin of 870 votes. BJP had finished second then and Congress third.
“People have once again reposed their faith and confidence in the policies and welfare programmes of the Congress government,” CM Baghel said.
PCC president Mohan Markam called the bypoll “the semifinal” ahead of the 2023 assembly elections.
