POLITICS
BJP faces bypoll upset in UP’s Ghosi, Bengal’s Dhupguri, gets its first ever Muslim MLA in Tripura
- Admin
- Sep 09, 2023
BJP faces bypoll upset in UP’s Ghosi, Bengal’s Dhupguri, gets its first ever Muslim MLA in Tripura
BJP held 3 of the 7 seats where bypolls were held on 5 September, lost Ghosi despite fielding former SP leader Dara Singh Chauhan, who had won by margin of over 22,000 votes in 2022.
Despite a win in the minority-dominated Boxanagar in Tripura, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday received a major setback in the Assembly bypolls, losing at Dhupguri in West Bengal and Ghosi in Uttar Pradesh.
The BJP had fielded Dara Singh Chauhan, who won the seat by a margin of 22,216 seats contesting as an SP candidate in the 2022 UP assembly polls. Chauhan lost by 42,759 votes to the Samajwadi Party candidate supported by the Congress. In West Bengal, its defeat underlined further erosion in the party’s base in the state.
In contrast, the party is on a downslide in West Bengal where it had put up a spirited fight in 2019 Lok Sabha and 2021 assembly elections.
For the Opposition, the victory in Ghosi will surely come as a boost at a time when efforts are underway to put up a united front against the BJP under the umbrella of the INDIA bloc in less than a year for the parliamentary election. Jharkhand Mukti Morcha’s (JMM) win in Dumri despite the BJP backing the All Jharkhand Students Union (AJSU) candidate will also leave the Opposition camp happy.
SP candidate Sudhakar Singh’s victory in the Ghosi bypolls is also significant as the Opposition has been struggling to counter the BJP’s dominance in Uttar Pradesh ever since Yogi Adityanath took office in 2017. Singh defeated Dara Singh Chauhan, whose defection to the BJP necessitated the bypoll.
The Congress did not field any candidate in Ghosi, setting up a duel between the SP and the BJP, a template that the Opposition plans to replicate in “as many seats as possible” — as announced after the third meeting of the INDIA bloc in Mumbai earlier this month — in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls to prevent a split in anti-BJP votes.
The Ghosi mandate also underscored the further marginalisation of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which did not contest the seat this time. In the days leading to the polls, BSP supremo Mayawati, who announced that she will not align with either the INDIA bloc or the NDA, had urged her supporters to either abstain from voting or press the NOTA button.
However, the results showed that only a little over 1,400 votes went to NOTA. In the 2022 assembly polls, BSP had bagged a substantial vote share of 21.12 percent in Ghosi, which was won by Chauhan by a margin of 22,216 votes. The Congress polled merely 0.78 percent votes in Ghosi in the last election.
Nevertheless, a Congress candidate in the fray could have prevented the SP from getting the full backing of the Dalits, who traditionally backed the BSP in this seat located in Mau district.
As for Bagheshwar, the BJP managed to retain the seat in Uttarakhand, albeit with a smaller margin.
In the 2022 Uttarakhand election, BJP’s Chandan Ram Das, who won Bageshwar three consecutive times, won the seat for the fourth time by defeating his Congress rival by a margin of 12,141 votes. The Aam Aadmi Party had polled 16,109 votes, which cost the Congress the seat.
The AAP was not in the fray in the bypolls necessitated due to Das’s death. The BJP fielded Parwati Dass, the late MLA’s widow, while the Congress made Basant Kumar, who contested on an AAP ticket the last time, its candidate.
Though the SP also fielded a candidate, the party failed to make any dent with only 637 votes cast in its favour. It was up from the 508 it polled last time.
