The
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) took four out of seven seats in the bypoll results
declared Sunday, November 6. BJP candidates won in Uttar Pradesh’s Gola
Gokrannath, Bihar’s Gopalganj, Haryana’s Adampur and Odisha’s Dhamnagar. The
Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) led by Lalu Prasad Yadav’s son Tejaswi won Mokarma
while the Telangana Rashtriya Samiti (TRS, now Bharat Rashtriya Samiti) won the
Munugode seat. Shiv Sena retained its Mumbai’s Andheri East Assembly seat.

Adampur,
Haryana

In Haryana’s
Adampur, BJP coasted to victory. Adampur is one of the states 90 Assembly
constituencies. Bhavya Bishnoi, son of Kuldeep Bishnoi and grandson of former chief
minister Bhajan Lal, won the seat with over 16,000 votes. The by-poll was
necessitated when Kuldeep Bishnoi, who was a Congress MLA from Adampur, quit
the grand old party to join the BJP.

Bishnoi’s
in Adampur are a powerful family. Bhajan Lal’s family has not lost the seat
since 1968.

Andheri
East, Maharashtra

In Mumbai’s
Andheri East, it was Rituja Latke who won by a comfortable margin. Latke is a
member of Shiv Sena’s Uddhav Thackeray faction. The bypoll in Andheri East was
necessitated by the death of Rituja Latke’s husband and sitting MLA Ramesh
Latke in May this year. With the BJP withdrawing its candidate from the
constituency, it was a cakewalk for Rituja Latke.

Gopalganj,
Bihar

In Bihar’s
Gopalganj, a traditional stronghold of the Bharatiya Janata Party where it has
been in power in over two decades, saw a cliff-hanger of a contest. BJP
candidate Kusum Devi polled 70,032 votes while RJD’s Mohan Gupta polled 68,243
votes.

Mokama,
Bihar

The bypoll
results have been good for the RJD. While the party gave stiff competition to
the BJP in Gopalganj, Tejaswi Yadav’s party did well to keep its place in
Mokarma. The Mokarma by-polls were triggered after MLA Anant Kumar Singh was
disqualified as a people’s representative when he was convicted of a case
pertaining to illegal possession of weapons. Singh’s wife Neelam Devi was RJD’s
candidate and she won by a margin of over 16,000 votes.

Munugode,
Telangana

Munugode in
Telangana was one of the most anticipated electoral battles in the bypolls. The
Telangana Rashtriya Samiti (TRS) won the polls but by a narrow margin against
the BJP. The Munugode seat belonged to the Congress. But after the Congress MLA
jumped ship and join the BJP, the small Assembly constituency turned into a
battleground between BJP and Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao’s national ambitions.

Gola
Gokarannath, Uttar Pradesh

This was
supposed to be a comfortable victory for the BJP and so it was. BJP candidate
Aman Giri won over 34,000 more votes than the Samajwadi Party (SP) candidate
who came in second. The Gola Gokarannath elections were necessitated by the
death of BJP MLA Arvind Giri. Aman Giri is his son.

Dhamnagar,
Odisha

In Odisha’s
Dhamnagar, the BJP have secured a comfortable margin over the Biju Janata Dal.
Dhamnagar is a traditional BJP stronghold and the result delivered no
surprises. BJP candidate Suryabanshi Suraj was leading comfortably at the time
of the last update.