BHOPAL: Of the three Madhya Pradesh Assembly seats to which by-elections were held on Thursday, the BJP retained Agar (reserved seat) and Vijayraghavgarh but lost Bahoriband to the Congress.
A jubilant Congress, which was expecting a washout in the byelections, was quick to attribute the win in Bahoriband to the people’s “loss of faith” in Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“People have lost faith in Modi, and the bad days of the BJP are now near. Despite misusing the government machinery, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan could not wrest the Bahoriband seat,” state Congress president Arun Yadav said.
On the other hand, the BJP said it would introspect to find out the reasons for the defeat. The loss in Bahoriband came on the day when the new state BJP chief, Nand Kumar Chouhan, was to take over officially.
The Congress candidate in Bahoriband, Saurabh Singh, defeated his BJP rival, Pranav Pandey, by around 8,000 votes.
In Vijayraghavgarh, the BJP’s Sanjay Pathak defeated his nearest rival, Vijendra Mishra of the Congress, by an impressive margin of 53,397 votes while the BJP candidate in Agar, Gopal Parmar, got 27,102 votes more than Congress’ Rajkumar Gore.
The byelection in Bahoriband was necessitated by the death of sitting BJP MLA Prabhat Pandey.
In Vijayraghavgarh, the bypoll was held because the sitting Congress MLA and mining baron Sanjay Pathak had crossed over to the BJP during the recent Lok Sabha elections after being denied ticket.
The byelection in Agar was necessitated after sitting BJP MLA Manohar Untwal was elected from the Dewas Lok Sabha seat.
State Congress spokesperson Pankaj Chaturvedi said the Congress’ win in Bahoriband was an indication of the people’s mood.
“The so-called magic of Modi and Chouhan is over. In Bihar too, our alliance has performed well. This win will energise the party cadre,” he said.