Assembly bypolls: INDIA bloc wins 10 seats, BJP 2, Independent 1

NEW DELHI — INDIA bloc parties won 10 assembly seats, while the BJP clinched two and an Independent one, as votes were counted on Saturday for the by-elections held earlier this week on 13 seats in seven states.

The bypolls were held on Wednesday in four seats in West Bengal, three in Himachal Pradesh, two in Uttarakhand, and one each in Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Tamil Nadu.

The Congress, TMC, AAP and DMK are among the INDIA bloc parties that fielded candidates in the bypolls.

In Punjab, Mohinder Bhagat of the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) won the Jalandhar West seat by defeating his nearest rival and BJP nominee Sheetal Angural by a margin of 37,325 votes, the Election Commission (EC) said.

The seat fell vacant after Angural resigned as the AAP legislator and joined the BJP in March.

Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann said the victory with a big lead in the seat shows that the people of the state are “very happy” with his government’s work.

In Tamil Nadu, the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s (DMK) Anniyur Siva emerged victorious in the Vikravandi Assembly constituency.

He defeated his nearest rival — NDA constituent Pattali Makkal Katchi’s Ambumani C — by a margin of 67,757 votes.

On the four seats in West Bengal, Trinamool Congress (TMC) candidate Krishna Kalyani defeated BJP’s Manas Kumar Ghosh by a margin of 50,077 votes in the Raiganj assembly seat, and Mukut Nami Adhikari defeated BJP’s Manoj Kumar Biswas by 74,485 votes in Ranaghat Dakshin.

TMC’s Madhuparna Thakur defeated BJP’s Binay Kumar Biswas by 74,251 votes in Bagda, and Supti Pandey defeated BJP’s Kalyan Choubey by 62,312 votes, according to the EC.

Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu’s wife and Congress candidate Kamlesh Thakur defeated BJP’s Hoshiyar Singh by a margin of 9,399 votes to win the Dehra assembly seat.

In Nalagarh, Congress’ Hardeep Singh Bawa won against BJP’s K L Thakur by 25,618 votes.

The BJP won the Hamirpur seat with its candidate Ashish Sharma polling 27,041 votes against Congress’s Pushpinder Verma 25,470 votes, the website showed.

In Uttarakhand, the Congress’s candidates for the Badrinath and Manglaur bypolls — Lakhapat Singh Butola and Qazi Mohammad Nizamuddin — won their seats, according to the poll panel.

While Butola won the Badrinath seat by defeating former minister and MLA BJP’s Rajendra Singh Bhandari by 5,224 votes, Nizamuddin defeated BJP’s Kartar Singh Bhadana by a slender margin of 422 votes.

In Madhya Pradesh, BJP’s Kamslesh Pratap Shah won the Amarwara assembly seat by a margin of 3,027 votes against Congress’ Dheeran Sah Invati, while in Bihar, Independent candidate Shankar Singh won the Rupauli seat, defeating his nearest rival — JD(U)’s Kaladhar Prasad Mandal — by a margin of 8,246 votes, the EC website showed.