The Congress party on Saturday won the Dehra Assembly seat for the first time with their candidate Kamlesh Thakur, wife of Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu who secured the win by defeating BJP candidate Hoshiyar Singh with a margin of 9,399 votes.
After winning the Dehra assembly by-polls, Kamlesh Thakur told reporters, "The party leaders and workers worked day and night for this day... I will give all credit to the people who stood by the party throughout... I am proud of the people of Dehra..."
Thakur polled 32,737 votes in the bypoll against 23,338 votes polled by Singh. The three Independent candidates in this seat could not get even 200 votes each.
Of the 86,520 voters in this assembly segment, 65.42 per cent exercised their franchise on July 10.
Dehra Assembly constituency was carved out after a delimitation exercise in 2012.
Senior BJP leader and former minister Ravi Inder Singh was elected from the seat in 2012.
Hoshiyar Singh won the seat as an Independent in 2017 and 2022.
Himachal Pradesh Bypolls
In the Hamirpur assembly seat, BJP's Ashish Sharma, who was trailing in the first four rounds against Congress' Pushpinder Verma, was now ahead by 1545 votes after the seventh round.
Congress candidate Hardeep Singh Bawa was also leading by 4,173 votes after the sixth round against the BJP candidate K L Thakur in the Nalagarh assembly seat, reportedly.
Congress' Hardeep Singh Bawa defeated his nearest rival and BJP candidate K L Thakur in the bypoll to the Nalagarh assembly seat by 8,990 votes. Bawa is a five-time Indian National Trade Union Congress president.
BJP's Ashish Sharma, however, managed to win the assembly bypolls from Hamirpur seat as he secured 1,571 votes more than nearest rival and Congress candidate Pushpinder Verma.
In another first, there will not be a single Independent MLA in the state assembly.
The Congress's strength in the 68-member assembly had dropped from 40 to 34 after six of its MLAs joined the BJP. It has now regained the tally it secured in the assembly elections in 2022, after winning four seats in bypolls -- held along with the Lok Sabha elections in June -- and two more it won on Saturday.
The BJP, which fielded all three Independent MLAs from their respective seats, now has 28 members in the Vidhan Sabha.
Reactions
CM Sukhu said the people of the state have rejected the "politics of defection" and defeated the BJP.
The voters have given a befitting reply to the Congress turncoats and it is a lesson for the next fifty years for all the parties that "toppling elected governments with money power would not yield results".
Meanwhile former chief minister and Leader of the Opposition in the state assembly Jai Ram Thakur, in a statement, said the BJP accepted the people's mandate. "Our fight for the welfare of the people of the state would continue from road to Vidhan Sabha," he said.
The BJP would look into the shortcomings that led to defeat in these by elections, Thakur added.
