NEW DELHI, Nov 10: In the high-voltage by-elections for 28 seats in the Madhya Pradesh state Assembly, the BJP ministry headed by Shivraj Singh Chauhan has comfortably swum to safety by winning five of the seats and establishing unbeatable leads in another 14 constituencies.
The BJP having 107 members in the 230-member House needed another nine seats to stay in power and by 6 P.M. on Tuesday, the party had nearly touched the magic figure and was pulling ahead to reach a comfortable majority with 125 seats. The former Congress chief minister Kamal Nath, who was claiming that his party would dislodge the BJP government in the by-elections, has conceded defeat and sent a congratulatory note to Chauhan.
The Congress, which lost power after 25 of its members, close to the rebel leader Jyotiraditya Scindia, quit the party and joined the BJP earlier this year following differences with Kamal Nath, had till evening was in a position to clinch only seven seats while one seat was headed to the kitty of the Bahujan Samaj Party The Congress needed to win all the 28 seats to reclaim majority or at least 21 seats to be in a position to bargain with some smaller parties for support, but was certain to end up far behind. Of the total 28 seats which went to the by-polls, 25 were caused by the resignation of the Congress members and three due to death of the sitting members.
While up and down swing continued in the Bihar Assembly elections, the by-elections for 56 seats across 11 states, including the 28 in MP, by and large brought in cheer for the BJP. While the party won all the eight seats in Gujarat, it won six of the seven seats in UP with one seat going to Samajwadi Party with identical results coming from Chhattisgarh where too the BJP claimed six conceding won to the Samajwadi Party. The BJP also won both the seats in Karnataka. In Manipur, the BJP won four seats with one going to an independent. Its surprise performance was in Telangana where the party was comfortably leading in the only by-election for the Dubbak over the TRS candidate.
Haryana brought good tidings for the Congress giving the party the only seat it went for by-poll while in Jharkhand also the party won one seat and the other going to its ally Jharkhand Mukti Morcha.
In Nagaland one seat shared by an independent and the Nationalist Democratic progressive Party while in Odisha Biju Janata Dal was leading in both the seats by late Tuesday evening.
The outcome of the MP by-elections was a shock for the Congress which was elected to power along with its allies only two years ago with a comfortable 121 seats but Scindia rocked the boat earlier this year by defecting to the BJP along with 22 other MLAs at first, and then three more. While the Congress’ strength reduced to 88, the BJP, which had won 109 seats in the 2018 Assembly elections, crossed the halfway mark and instated its government Chauhan a couple of days after COVID pandemic-induced lockdown was declared in the country in March.
Of the total 63 Assembly seats vacant across the country, the Election Commission decided not to hold by-polls “at this stage” in the remaining seven seats. These vacant seats are in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Assam, and West Bengal, all of which are scheduled to get new assemblies next year.
(Manas Dasgupta)