Results of the by-election: with 10 of the 13 seats won by the INDIA bloc, the BJP won 2 and the independents win 1
While the TMC won four seats in West Bengal and the AAP won one seat in Punjab, the Congress gained two seats each in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.
Votes for the by-polls in 13 assembly seats across seven states were counted on Saturday. The INDIA bloc seats secured 10 seats, a significant boost for the opposition, and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won two seats.
In the assembly segments that were held on July 10, the Congress secured the seats of Dehra and Nalagarh in Himachal Pradesh, but the BJP took Hamirpur.
In Dehra, chief minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu’s wife, Kamlesh Thakur, was fielded by the Congress and defeated BJP candidate Hoshyar Singh by a margin of 9,399 votes.
Hardeep Singh Bawa of the Congress defeated KL Thakur of the BJP by a margin of 8,990 votes in the Nalagarh constituency. But the BJP’s Ashish Sharma won the Hamirpur seat, defeating Congressman Pushpinder Verma, his nearest opponent, by a margin of 1,571 votes.
Following the BJP candidate’s victory in the Rajya Sabha elections on February 27, which saw the support of six Congress rebels and independent MLAs Hoshyar Singh, Ashish Sharma, and KL Thakur cast their votes, the three assembly seats became vacant.
On March 23, they became members of the BJP, and they filed a case with the Himachal Pradesh High Court asking the Speaker to accept their resignations.
In Uttarakhand, where two seats were up for election, Lakhapat Singh Butola of the Congress defeated Rajendra Singh Bhandari of the BJP by a margin of 5,224 votes from Badrinath. Qazi Mohammad Nizamuddin emerged victorious in the Manglaur seat, defeating Kartar Singh Bhadana of the BJP by a mere 422 votes.
After three terms as a Congress MLA, Rajendra Singh resigned in March and joined the Bharatiya Janata Party, putting the Badrinath seat up for election. Following the passing of BSP MLA Sarwant Karim Ansari in October 2023—he has won the seat twice, in 2012 and 2022—voting in Manglaur took place.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), a partner of the INDIA bloc, fielded Mohinder Bhagat from Jalandhar West in Punjab. Bhagat won the seat by a margin of more than 37,325 votes, besting his closest competitor, BJP candidate Sheetal Angural.
Four assembly seats were won by the Trinamool Congress, which is led by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. Its candidates, Madhuparna Thakur from Bagda, Supti Pandey from Maniktala, Mukut Mani Adhikari from Ranaghat Dakshin, and Krishna Kalyani from Raiganj, won.
Since dawn, the party has gained the upper hand over its competitors. On July 10, there were by-elections for these four assembly seats. In the meantime, Anniyur Siva, the leader of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), was leading in the Vikravandi assembly constituency of Tamil Nadu.
Additionally, the Bharatiya Janata Party became victorious in Madhya Pradesh, where its nominee Kamlesh Pratap Shah defeated Dheeran Shah of the Congress party by a margin of 3,027 votes.
Independent candidate Shankar Singh defeated Janata Dal (United) opponent Kaladhar Mandal in the Bihar Rupauli seat by a margin of 8,246 votes.
With a margin of more than 67,00 votes, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) leader Anniyur Siva defeated Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) candidate Anbumani C to retain the Vikravandi assembly constituency in Tamil Nadu.
The by-elections are considered a crucial test for the BJP, which secured 240 seats but fell short of the 272-majority threshold, necessitating the backing of allies in the NDA coalition to establish a government.
The NDA passed the halfway point with the help of important allies like N Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and Nitish Kumar’s JD(U), which won 16 and 12 seats in Andhra Pradesh and Bihar, respectively, along with other coalition partners.
