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INDIA bloc parties won 10 of the 13 Assembly seats across seven States where by-polls were held on July 10 and the results were announced on July 13. The popular verdict broadly echoes the recent Lok Sabha election results that signalled a fatigue with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The by-poll results indicate that the BJP’s politics is encountering some resistance on the ground. Of particular note is Himachal Pradesh where the Congress won two of the three Assembly seats which fell vacant after three independent legislators joined the BJP after resigning their seats. The government of Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu had teetered on the brink in February after six Congress MLAs, along with these three independents, had voted in favour of a BJP candidate in a Rajya Sabha contest. They were later disqualified from the Assembly after Congress candidate Abhishek Manu Singhvi lost the Rajya Sabha poll. This had brought down the party’s tally to 34 in the 68-member House. With its victories in Dehra and Nalagarh, the Congress has returned to its original strength of 40 MLAs. The Sukhu government had won a majority on June 4 when the Congress won four of the six seats that had by-polls alongwith the 2024 Lok Sabha election. By restoring the numbers of the Congress, the electorate of Himachal Pradesh has rejected the opportunism of the defectors and the overreach of the BJP.
Something similar happened in Uttarakhand too, as the Congress retained the Badrinath seat. The sitting MLA from the seat, Rajendra Singh Bhandari, who had defected to the ruling BJP, was defeated by Congress’s Lakhapat Singh Butola. It is not that all defectors are being rejected by the people. The Congress continued to suffer losses in Madhya Pradesh where Kamlesh Pratap Shah, who had switched sides to the BJP, won a tough contest against his former party. The continuing decline of the Congress in the State is a clear message to the party that it needs to look beyond the current local leadership. While the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s win in Tamil Nadu’s Vikravandi seat further reinforced its position, in West Bengal, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) continued to reign supreme by wresting three seats from the BJP, in Raiganj, Ranaghat Dakshin and Bagda. In all the three seats, MLAs of the saffron party had switched sides to the TMC, which is the ruling party in the State. The TMC also retained the Maniktala seat. In Punjab, the Aam Aadmi party got its pound of flesh from the BJP as it trounced the sitting MLA in Jalandhar West who had defected to the BJP and sought a re-election. All the parties should heed the voice of the people, seek consensus and reduce conflict, and eschew opportunistic defections.
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Restoring a verdict: The Hindu Editorial on the Assembly by-poll results
