Bypolls | BJP sweeps Gujarat; JD(U) loses to RJD

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has won all the six by-elections in Gujarat, including two Lok Sabha seats and four assembly seats, boosting Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s clout ahead of the party’s national executive meeting in Goa later this week. All the six seats were earlier held by the Congress.

With this, Modi can claim that his popularity in the state is intact. In the 2012 assembly elections, his tally had come down from 117 in 2007 to 115. Now, with the by-elections, it has crossed 117.

However, the Congress contained its downward electoral slide by winning the Yavatmal assembly constituency in Maharashtra. Nandini Parvekar, widow of late MLA Nilesh Parvekar, whose death in a car accident necessitated the by-election, won the seat despite the Vidarbha drought and sabotage by her own party colleagues.

In West Bengal, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) retained the Howrah Lok Sabha constituency despite the Saradha chit fund scam, defeating the Communist Party of India (Marxist) by nearly 27,000 votes. In 2009, the TMC had contested Howrah in an electoral understanding with the Congress and won by a margin of 37,000 votes. This time, victory was a prestige issue for West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who campaigned personally for her candidate, footballer Prasun Banerjee.

However, the biggest shock value was the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD)’s victory in the Maharajganj Lok Sabha seat in Bihar, where a valued colleague of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, education minister P K Shahi, lost the election by a massive 137,000 margin. As advocate-general of Bihar, Shahi was largely responsible for prosecuting mafia leaders and local strongmen by invoking the Arms Act against them and pursuing the cases aggressively.

The alliance between the BJP and Janata Dal (United) or JD(U) had come under tremendous stress after Kumar had vehemently opposed the projection of Modi as the National Democratic Alliance’s PM candidate. The loss in the by-election will aggravate the situation as senior leaders of state unit of JD(U) blamed the BJP for the loss.

“It is not a defeat of P K Shahi, but a defeat of Nitish Kumar in Maharajganj,” said RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav.

Elated by BJP’s clean sweep in the by-election in Gujarat, Modi claimed he was confident of the victory and had not even campaigned for the party candidates. BJP won the Porbandar and Banaskantha Lok Sabha seats and also the assembly seats of Limbadi, Morva Hadaf, Jetpur, and Dhoraji.

“The people of Gujarat have given a thumping victory to the BJP and Congress has fared miserably. BJP’s emphatic victory and the Congress’ defeat in two Lok Sabha seats is in a way a message of public anger and an ultimatum to the Congress party,” said Modi.