The Opposition INDIA alliance, which gave a tough fight to the BJP in the Lok Sabha polls, has come out on top in the by-elections to 13 Assembly seats across seven states. The INDIA bloc has won three seats and is ahead on 8 other seats.
The Congress, Trinamool Congress (TMC), AAP and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) are the INDIA bloc parties that fielded candidates in the bypolls held on Wednesday in Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Tamil Nadu.
In Punjab, AAP’s Mohinder Bhagat won the Jalandhar West seat by over 23,000 votes. In West Bengal, Trinamool Congress candidates have taken the lead in four seats, with BJP trailing behind in each constituency.
Himachal Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu’s wife Kamlesh Thakur, who made her electoral debut, won the Dehra elections.. In the state, the Congress has been leading in Nalagarh too, while BJP’s Ashish Sharma is ahead in Hamirpur.
In Uttarakhand, Congress candidates have taken the lead in both Badrinath and Manglaur seats.
In Madhya Pradesh, Congress’s Dheeran Shah Invati has secured a lead of over 4,000 votes in the Amarwar seat. Meanwhile, in Bihar, JD(U)’s Kaladhar Prasad Mandal has taken the lead in Rupauli, and in Tamil Nadu, DMK’s Anniyur Siva is leading by over 10,000 votes in the Vikravandi assembly seat.
The counting of votes for the 13 legislative assembly seats spread across seven states began on Saturday morning. Voting was held on Wednesday for the assembly seats in Bihar, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, and Himachal Pradesh.
These bypolls were the first since the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, which saw the BJP winning 240 seats – 32 short of the majority. The NDA, however, managed to cross the halfway mark of 272 with a total tally of 293 seats. The Congress-led INDIA bloc clinched 232 seats.
