INDIA bloc wins 10 of 13 by-election seats in 7 states, TMC wins 3, Congress 3 | India News – Times of India

Opposition INDIA block parties won 10 seats in the assembly, while the BJP won two and an independent candidate bagged one, when votes were counted on Saturday for mid-term elections held on Wednesday for 13 constituencies in seven states — four in Bengal, three in Himachal Pradesh, two in Uttarakhand and one each in Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Tamil Nadu.
Trinamool Congress (TMC) won all four seats in Bengal, grabbing three from the BJP and retaining one, taking its total to 222 in the 294-seat Bengal Assembly. The party took Bagda, Ranaghat South and Raiganj from the BJP and retained Maniktala by large margins.
Key victories were for Supti Pandey in Maniktala and Madhuparna Thakur in Bagda — Bengal’s youngest legislator at 25 years and one month. Madhuparna defeated BJP’s Binay Kumar Biswas by 33,455 votes, while 66-year-old Supti outpolled her husband and former BJP minister Sadhan Pandey by 62,312 votes.

Krishna Kalyani defeated BJP’s Manas Kumar Ghosh by 50,007 votes in Raiganj, giving TMC its maiden victory in the constituency. Mukut Nami Adhikari defeated BJP’s Manoj Kumar Biswas by 39,048 votes in Ranaghat South, which TMC had last won 13 years ago. Both Kalyani and Adhikari had joined TMC after their victories in the 2021 assembly election, but had lost the 2024 Lok Sabha elections as Trinamool candidates.
In Himachal, Congress candidate and CM Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu’s wife Kamlesh Thakur defeated BJP’s Hoshiyar Singh by 9,399 votes in Dehra. Kamlesh got 32,737 votes (57.94%) while Singh got 23,338 votes (41.3%). Congress MP Hardeep Singh Bawa won Nalagarh against BJP’s KL Thakur with 25,618 votes. BJP won the Hamirpur seat by a narrow margin of 1,571 votes with Ashish Sharma getting 27,041 votes against Congress MP Pushpinder Verma’s 25,470 votes.
Wednesday’s by-elections were necessitated after three former independent MLAs — Hoshiyar Singh, Ashish Sharma and KL Thakur — resigned in March and joined the BJP.
With these two victories, the Congress has increased its tally from 38 to 40 in the 68-seat Vidhan Sabha, while the BJP’s total number of seats has gone up from 27 to 28. Before the February uprising, when six of its MLAs left to join the BJP, the Congress had 40 seats. On June 4, by winning four of the six seats in the by-elections, the Congress had strengthened its position from 34 to 38 seats.
In Uttarakhand, after a crushing defeat in the LS elections where it lost all its five seats to the BJP, Congress made a strong comeback by winning two by-elections with its candidates Lakhapat Singh Butola and Qazi Mohammad Nizamuddin winning the Badrinath and Manglaur seats respectively. Butola won by 5,095 votes, defeating Rajendra Singh Bhandari, who had switched to the BJP from Congress just before the LS elections. Nizamuddin’s victory was by a narrow margin of 422 votes over Kartar Singh Bhadana of the BJP.
In Madhya Pradesh, BJP’s Kamlesh Pratap Shah won the Amarwara seat by 3,027 votes against Congress’ Dheeran Sah Invati. Congress led till the 17th round, but the BJP backed down in the 20th and 21st rounds. The BJP was elated as it managed to dismantle another stronghold of Congress stalwart Kamal Nath. In both the 2018 and 2023 assembly elections, Congress won all seven assembly segments in Chhindwara, which the former CM represented in LS for nine terms. For the first time in 44 years, the BJP defeated Congress in Chhindwara in an LS election, with Vivek Bunty Sahu defeating Kamal Nath’s son Nakul by over 1.1 lakh votes this year.
DMK retained the Vikravandi assembly constituency in Tamil Nadu, with its candidate Anniyur Siva winning by a margin of 67,169 votes. Siva secured 1.23 lakh votes against PMK’s C Anbumani, who got 56,026 votes. The by-election, held after the death of DMK MLA N Pugazhenthi, saw a voter turnout of 82.48%. CM MK Stalin attributed the victory to overcoming “defamatory campaigns and lies” by the BJP-led alliance over the government’s handling of the illegal sale of arrack, which recently claimed 66 lives in Kallakurichi.
In Punjab, AAP’s Mohinder Bhagat won the Jalandhar West seat by defeating BJP’s Sheetal Angural by 37,325 votes. The seat fell vacant after Angural resigned as an AAP legislator and joined the BJP in March along with AAP MP Sushil Rinku. Bhagat was with the BJP before switching to AAP in the 2023 by-elections. His father Chunni Lal was a BJP minister and had won the constituency three times, including when it was Jalandhar South, before delimitation.
Independent candidate Shankar Singh won Bihar’s Rupauli seat, defeating JD(U) candidate Kaladhar Mandal by 8,246 votes and pushing RJD candidate Bima Bharti to third position. The by-elections became necessary after Bharti, the sitting JD(U) MLA, switched to RJD to contest the Purnia LS seat, where she lost to independent candidate Pappu Yadav.