Assembly bypolls: TRS wins Munugode while BJP bags 4 seats; RJD, Uddhav Sena 1 each

The Bharatiya Janata Party won four of the seven seats where byelections were held on November 3. It retained three seats — Gola Gokarnath in Uttar Pradesh, Gopalganj in Bihar and Dhamnagar in Odisha — and wrested one from the Congress — Adampur in Haryana.

The keenly contested Munugode bypoll in Telangana saw a see-saw battle with K Chandrashekar’s Rao’s Telangana Rashtriya Samithi (TRS) finally prevailing over the BJP. TRS candidate Kusukuntla Prabhakar Reddy defeated his nearest BJP rival Komatireddy Raj Gopal Reddy by 11,666 votes. Congress nominee Palvai Sravanthi was never in the contest.

Munugode witnessed a bypoll after Komatireddy Raj Gopal Reddy, the sitting MLA,  resigned on August 2.

In Bihar, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) candidate Neelam Devi won the Mokama Assembly seat in Bihar, defeating BJP’s Sonam Devi by 16,707 votes. Neelam Devi got 79,646 votes while BJP’s Sonam Devi bagged 62,939 votes. BSP got 8,854 votes and AIMIM got 12,214 votes.

The seat fell vacant after Anant Singh, the sitting MLA, was dismissed due to a conviction in a criminal case.

In Gopalganj though the saffron party retained the assembly seat, beating the RJD in a cliffhanger of a contest. BJP candidate Kusum Devi, wife of MLA Subhash Singh whose death had necessitated the by-election, polled 70,032 votes, while RJDs Mohan Gupta got 68,243.

Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM and Mayawati’s BSP, often accused of being the BJPs “B team” by the RJD, finished third and fourth respectively, together accounting for more than 20,000 votes.

The contest in Gopalganj was necessitated due to the death of sitting BJP MLA Subhash Singh.

In other bypolls results, BJP candidate Aman Giri won the Gola Gokarannath Assembly bypolls (Lakhimpur Kheri seat) in Uttar Pradesh, defeating his nearest rival Vinay Tiwari of the Samajwadi Party by 34,298 votes and retaining the seat of his father and late BJP MLA late Arvind Giri whose death on September 6 necessitated the bypoll.

BJP’s Bhavya Bishnoi won the Adampur seat in Haryana vacated by his father Kuldeep Bishnoi, with more than 16,000-vote margin. The seat was vacated when Kuldeep Bishnoi left Congress to join the BJP in August.

In Maharashtra, Rutuja Latke, the candidate of the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), won the bypoll to Andheri (East) Assembly seat in Mumbai. The bypoll was held due to the untimely death of Sena MLA Ramesh Latke.

In Odisha, BJP retained Odisha’s Dhamnagar assembly seat with its candidate Suryabanshi Suraj defeating his BJD rival Abanti Das by a margin of 9,881 votes, according to EC official. Dhamnagar seat fell vacant due to the untimely demise of sitting BJP MLA Bishnu Charan Das.

Also read: Bypolls: Voting underway for Munugode, 6 other Assembly seats in 6 states

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