NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) asserted its electoral dominance on Monday by winning four Assembly seats out of seven in the by-polls held across Gujarat, Maharashtra, Nagaland and Tripura.
The saffron party retained all four constituencies, which had fallen vacant due to the deaths of sitting MLAs.
In the most significant result, BJP’s Akshay Shivajirao Kardile won the Rahuri seat in Maharashtra’s Ahmednagar district by a massive margin of 1,12,587 votes. Kardile polled 1,40,093 votes, while his nearest rival, Mokate Govind Khandu of the NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar), was restricted to just 27,506 votes.
In Gujarat, the saffron party maintained its grip on the Umreth constituency in Anand district. Harshadbhai Govindbhai Parmar, the son of late MLA Govind Parmar, defeated Congress candidate Bhrugurajsinh Chauhan by 30,743 votes. Parmar secured 85,500 votes, while Chauhan managed 54,757. The AAP did not field a candidate in this poll.
In Tripura’s Dharmanagar, BJP’s Jahar Chakraborti won by a comfortable margin of 18,290 votes. The seat was previously held by the late Assembly Speaker Biswa Bandhu Sen. Chakraborti secured 24,291 votes, while the opposition vote was split between the CPI(M) and Congress, which polled 6,001 and 5,936 votes respectively. Both parties failed to reach a seat-sharing agreement.
In Nagaland’s Koridang seat, Daochier I. Imchen, the consensus candidate of the BJP-led PDA, defeated his nearest rival, Independent candidate Major Toshikaba, by 3,123 votes. The constituency saw a high voter turnout of 82.21 per cent.
The opposition’s failure to present a united front, particularly in Tripura and Maharashtra, contributed significantly to the BJP’s victories.