Despite Losing In Munugode, Mokama, And Andheri East, The BJP Wins Four Of The Seven Assembly Seats

Of the seven assembly seats with results, the Bharatiya Janata Party won four of them. After the Shiv Sena was split by a BJP-backed coup headed by Eknath Shinde, Uddhav Thackeray’s faction won its first election.

Ten points about this major story are as follows:

1. In Gola Gokarnnath in Uttar Pradesh, Adampur in Haryana, Gopalganj in Bihar, and Dhamnagar in Odisha, the BJP triumphed. In Mokama, Bihar, the Rashtriya Janata Dal under Tejashwi Yadav has triumphed. The Shiv Sena faction led by Uddhav Thackeray won the Munugode seat, while K Chandrashekar Rao’s Telangana Rashtriya Samithi won in Mumbai’s Andheri East.
2. Before byelections were required, the BJP had three of the seven seats, the Congress held two, while the Shiv Sena and the RJD each held one. Bihar has two seats, whereas UP, Haryana, Maharashtra, Telangana, and Odisha each have one.
3. In Bihar’s Mokama, the RJD candidate Neelam Devi won. She is the wife of Anant Singh, who was disqualified after being found guilty of illegally possessing firearms.
4. In the Gopalganj district, the home district of RJD president Lalu Prasad, the BJP narrowly prevailed. This was the first election after Nitish Kumar broke his alliance with the BJP in order to forge a new one with Tejashwi Yadav’s RJD.
5. Former chief minister Bhajan Lal’s family seat in Haryana, Adampur, determined that his grandson Bhavya Bishnoi, who switched from the Congress to the BJP, can continue the 68-year tradition. This by-election was brought about by Bhavya Bishnoi’s father Kuldeep Bishnoi, who led the family into the BJP and resigned as Adampur’s MLA as he defected.
6. The faction led by Uddhav Thackeray won the first election. Shiv Sena candidate Rutuja Latke (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) won the Mumbai by-election in Andheri (East) by an enormous margin of more than 66,000 votes.
7. In Munugode, Telangana, the ruling TRS defeated the BJP by a hefty margin of over 10,000 votes. For KCR, the Munugode byelection was a prestige contest since a BJP victory would have revealed a weakness in the TRS’ defensive line, opening the door for the BJP to enter and attempt to increase its influence.
8. In Dhamnagar, Odisha, the BJP dethroned the local party in power, the BJD. The BJP had previously won the seat, but the passing of MLA Bishnu Charan Sethi prompted a new election. Suryabanshi Suraj, a BJP candidate, and Sethi’s son won the seat.
9. The BJP kept the Gola Gokarannath seat in its heartland of Uttar Pradesh, which became vacant with the passing of its MLA Arvind Giri on September 6. A direct contest between former MLA Vinay Tiwari of the Samajwadi Party and Aman Giri, son of Arvind Giri, of the BJP resulted from the BSP and Congress’s abstention.
10. None of these competitions is likely to change the calculus for the state governments of today. However, with regional parties attempting to form a unified front for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections — which are just over a year away — these could act as confidence boosters or image busters for some parties.

News Mania Desk