SP’s Ghosi win headlines NDA vs INDIA bypoll bout
INDIA in a contest that was widely dubbed as a test match between the two fronts ahead of the five-State Assembly polls later this year.
NDA vs India
NEW DELHI: Discount the Puthuppally seat in Kerala where the fight was essentially fraternal, it was honours shared between the BJP-led NDA and the newly coalesced opposition coalition.
INDIA in a contest that was widely dubbed as a test match between the two fronts ahead of the five-State Assembly polls later this year and the Lok Sabha polls.
However, the challengers still gained a morale boost by winning the Ghosi Assembly seat in Uttar Pradesh, where the Samajwadi Party, backed by its partners, scored a creditable victory against the Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath-led BJP regime’s candidate.
Except for the bypoll in Kerala, where the Congress and its INDIA partner CPM were engaged in a bitter fight for the seat that fell vacant after the death of former chief minister Oommen Chandy, Ghosi was the only constituency where an opposition candidate defeated the ruling party rival.
The victory came had extra sweetness for Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party, as the BJP candidate it defeated had switched to the saffron camp after winning the Assembly polls on its ticket, which necessitated the bypoll.
“It is a win for positive politics and a defeat for negative communal politics... It is Bharat starting towards INDIA’s victory,” Akhilesh said.
“The Bageshwar assembly victory is people’s seal on the development works of the party’s double engine government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi,” said BJP chief JP Nadda.
The final result stands thus: the BJP maintained its hold on the Bageshwar seat in Uttarakhand, while retaining Dhanpur and wresting Boxanagar from CPM in Tripura.
On the other side, Samajwadi Party retained Ghosi, TMC wrested the Dhupguri seat from BJP in West Bengal, and JMM retained the Dumri seat in Jharkhand.
The ruling CPM suffered an expected setback in Puthuppally, battling as it did against the massive sympathy wave triggered by the death of veteran Congress leader Oommen Chandy, which the national party capitalised on by fielding his son Chandy Oommen. The result, however, was still noteworthy, as the scion scored a record margin of nearly 38,000 votes.