Bypolls: BJP wins 4 of 7 seats; RJD, Uddhav's Sena, TRS 1 each

The Bharatiya Janata Party won in four out of seven assembly constituencies in six states, retaining the three seats it held, in the by-election results declared on Sunday, while the Telangana Rashtra Samiti and Rashtriya Janata Dal won one each after a stiff contest with the saffron party.

Rutuja Latke, the candidate of the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), won the by-election to Andheri (East) in Mumbai, the seat earlier represented by her deceased husband, after major parties including the BJP did not field candidates.

The second-highest number of votes (14.79 per cent) went to the None Of The Above (NOTA) option in the constituency.

The BJP said the result of the November 3 by-election was a stamp of approval by people on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's policies as it retained Gola Gokarannath in Uttar Pradesh, Dhamnagar in Odisha and Gopalganj in Bihar where it had fielded the kin of its party MLAs whose death necessitated the polls.

BJP candidate and former chief minister Bhajan Lal's grandson Bhavya Bishnoi defeated his nearest rival and Congress nominee Jai Prakash in Haryana's Adampur by a margin of around 16,000 votes, maintaining the family's winning streak.

Candidates of the Aam Aadmi Party and the Indian National Lok Dal lost their deposits as they failed to secure one-sixth of the votes polled.

The resignation of Bhavya's father Kuldeep Bishnoi necessitated the by-election after he left the Congress and joined the BJP.

The Adampur seat has been held by the Bhajan Lal's family since 1968, with the late leader representing it on nine occasions, his wife Jasma Devi once and Kuldeep on four occasions.

It was the only seat where the Congress was in some reckoning.

The party lost Adampur (Haryana) and Munugode (Telangana), where its MLAs had resigned and joined the BJP.

TRS candidate Kusukuntla Prabhakar Reddy defeated his nearest BJP rival Komatireddy Raj Gopal Reddy in Manugode by 10,309 votes, while Congress nominee Palvai Sravanthi was a distant third.

'Thanks to the people of Munugodu for reposing faith in TRS party & Hon'ble CM KCR's leadership.

'As promised, will adopt the constituency and work towards expeditious progress of pending works,' state minister and Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao's son K T Rama Rao tweeted.

In Bihar, the RJD saw its victory margin fall in Mokama and it fell short of a win in party president Lalu Prasad Yadav's home district of Gopalganj, which the BJP retained, albeit by the skin of its teeth.

It was the first electoral test for the Nitish Kumar-led 'Mahagathbandhan' (RJD-JDU-Cong) government, formed less than three months ago after the Janata Dal-United parted ways with the BJP.

The RJD candidate Neelam Devi won in Mokama by more than 16,000 votes.

The bypoll was necessitated after the disqualification of her husband MLA Anant Kumar Singh.

The BJP contested from the constituency for the first time as the saffron party had, on previous occasions, left the seat to its allies.

BJP's Kusum Devi, the wife of MLA Subhash Singh whose death had necessitated the by-election in Gopalganj, polled 70,032 votes, while RJD's Mohan Gupta got 68,243.

"Despite all the opposition forces coming together, the people have put their stamp on the development-oriented leadership of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi ji. It is clear from this that the faith of the people of Bihar is with the BJP," party chief J P Nadda said.

He said the victory in Gola Gokarannath and Adampur reflects the public support for the double-engine BJP governments.

BJP's Aman Giri defeated his nearest rival and Samajwadi Party candidate by over 34,000 votes in the UP seat that fell vacant after the death of his father and party MLA Arvind Giri on September 6.

"Aman Giri won by a margin of 34,298 votes. He received 1,24,810 votes and Vinay Tiwari got 90,512 votes," an official said.

With the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Congress keeping away, it was a direct contest between Aman Giri and Tiwari.

The BJP's campaign was led by CM Adityanath, while SP chief Akhilesh Yadav did not campaign.

Yadav on Sunday accused the BJP government of using illegal means in the election and said it had defeated democracy in the assembly seat. By securing 90,000 votes, the SP candidate has challenged the BJP, he claimed.

Gola Gokarannath is part of Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Ajay Mishra's Lok Sabha constituency Lakhimpur Kheri.

Adityanath congratulated BJP workers.

'This spectacular victory is a symbol of the unwavering faith of people in the public welfare policies of the double-engine BJP government,' Adityanath said in a tweet in Hindi.

In Odisha's Dhamnagar, BJP's Suryabanshi Suraj defeated ruling BJD's Abanti Das by a margin of 9,881 votes, an Election Commission official said.

The bypoll was necessitated by the death of Surja's father and BJP MLA Bishnu Charan Sethi in September.

Suryabanshi secured 80,351 votes, Das bagged 70,470 votes and Congress nominee Baba Harekrushna Sethi got only 3,561 votes.

In Mumbai, Latke Rutuja Latke got 66,530 votes out of the total 86,570 votes, followed by 12,806 votes polled in favour of the NOTA, an official said.

The NOTA gives an option to electors not to vote in favour of any of the candidates in an election.

Latke was pitted against six independent candidates.

This was the first electoral contest in Maharashtra after the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government collapsed in June following a revolt by a section of Shiv Sena MLAs led by Eknath Shinde.

Thackeray said the victory showed that people were supporting Shiv Sena.

"This is just the beginning of a fight. The (party) symbol is important but people look for the character too. The bypoll results show people support us," Thackeray told reporters at his residence

"Our party's name and symbol were frozen for this election, but those who wanted this are nowhere near the electoral ring," Thackeray said in a veiled swipe at the faction led by Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde.