Counting trends in the by-elections in three Parliamentary and 30 assembly constituencies across the country suggest that All-India Trinamool Congress has solidified its hold in West Bengal, while the BJP remains the dominant force in Assam.
The BJP, which won 38 per cent votes in Bengal – compared to 47 per cent of the TMC – in the assembly polls months back, has seen its vote share crash to 14-15 per cent. The vote share of the TMC has gone up to 75-percent, as of now, showing signs of a complete landslide. In Assam, the BJP’s vote share of 33 per cent is almost double that of the Congress at 17 per cent.
Madhya Pradesh may be headed towards a 2:1 finish, with the BJP the favourite on two seats, Prithvipur and Jobat, while the Congress is now leading on the Raigaon seat. The Khandwa Lok Sabha seat of MP is headed the BJP’s way, with Gyaneshwar Patil of the party holding a comfortable 40,000 lead over the Congress candidate.
There is good news for the Congress in Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan. The Congress is ahead on all three assembly seats in Himachal Pradesh. In the lone Lok Sabha seat of Mandi in the state, Congress candidate Pratibha Singh, wife of late Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, has won ober BJP’s Brigadier Kushal Chand Thakur by a considerable margin.
It has also won Arki Assembly seat by 3,162 votes . Earlier, the party had won Jubbal Kotkhai and is now close to winning the Fatehpur assembly seat as well. Pratibha's victory in Mandi parliamentary seat is a big blow to ruling BJP in Himachal.
In Rajasthan, too, the Congress is leading on both the assembly seats, Vallabhnagar and Dhariawad, with independent candidates in the second spot. The BJP is getting just 20-percent votes, with the Congress polling an average of 37 per cent votes in the two assembly segments.
In the Kusheshwar Asthan assembly seat in Bihar, the Janata (Dal) United candidate Aman Kumar Hazari has won by a margin of 12,698 votes over the Rashtriya Janata Dal, but the latter has taken a lead of 1,696 votes in Tarapur (14th round). Both seats were with the JD (U) last time.
In the Ellenabad assembly in Haryana, Abhay Singh Chautala of INLD has a lead of 3961 votes over Gobind Kanda of the BJP, while in Karnataka the BJP is ahead on one assembly seat and the Congress on the other.
The BJP now has a lead of 3219 votes over the TRS in the Huzurabad assembly seat. The YSR Congress has a massive lead of 90,533 votes over the BJP in Badvel, the only assembly seat that went to the polls in Andhra Pradesh during this round of by-polls.
