Assembly bypolls: AAP retains two seats in Punjab, Gujarat; UDF wrests Nilambur from Left front in Kerala
New Delhi: AAP’s Gopal Italia Monday won from Gujarat’s Visavadar assembly constituency and his party also retained Punjab’s Ludhiana West seat while the Congress-led UDF wrested Nilambur from the ruling LDF in Kerala, according to results of assembly bypolls in four states.
The ruling BJP in Gujarat retained the Kadi seat, while the Trinamool Congress maintained its hold on the Kaliganj assembly seat in West Bengal’s Nadia district.
The bypolls in the five constituencies were held June 19.
Italia, the former president of the Gujarat unit of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), defeated his nearest rival, BJP candidate Kirit Patel, in Visavadar seat of Junagadh district by a margin of 17,554 votes, according to data shared by the Election Commission.
Despite its near-total dominance in the state, the BJP has not won the Visavadar seat since 2007. The seat fell vacant in December 2023 after the then AAP legislator Bhupendra Bhayani resigned and joined the ruling BJP.
Punjab’s ruling AAP retained the Ludhiana West Assembly seat with its candidate Sanjeev Arora defeating his nearest rival and Congress candidate Bharat Bhushan Ashu by a margin of 10,637 votes.
Arora secured 35,179 votes while Ashu got 24,542 votes, according to the Election Commission data. BJP’s Jiwan Gupta polled 20,323 votes while the Shiromani Akali Dal’s nominee Parupkar Singh Ghuman got 8,203 votes.
The byelection was necessitated following the death of AAP MLA Gurpreet Bassi Gogi in January.
Thanking the voters for the wins, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief Arvind Kejriwal called the bypolls a “semi-final to 2027” and a clear sign that voters would reject both the BJP and the Congress.
Gujarat and Punjab will face assembly elections in 2027.
“Both the parties, Congress and BJP, contested the elections together in both places. Both of them had the same objective – to defeat AAP. But people rejected both these parties in both places,” Kejriwal said in a post on X.
Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann said the result is a clear indication that the people of the state are “extremely happy” with the government’s work. “We are working day and night with complete honesty and without any discrimination for the progress and prosperity of Punjab,” he said.
BJP’s Rajendra Chavda bagged the Kadi seat of Mehsana district in Gujarat, reserved for the Scheduled Caste candidates, by a margin of 39,452 votes over Congress’ Ramesh Chavda.
The Kadi seat fell vacant in February following the death of BJP MLA Karsan Solanki.
Gujarat Congress president Shaktisinh Gohil resigned from his post, taking moral responsibility for the defeat of the party’s candidates in Kadi and Visavadar assembly constituencies.
In Kerala, the Pinarayi Vijayan-led LDF government received a setback as the opposition Congress-led UDF wrested the Nilambur assembly constituency from it by a margin of 11,077 votes.
Congress’ Aryadan Shoukath, the son of the late Congress stalwart Aryadan Muhammed, defeated CPI(M) state secretariat member M Swaraj in the fiercely fought byelection.
It is the fourth byelection defeat for the Marxist party-led Left Democratic Front during the ongoing tenure of the second Pinarayi Vijayan government. The LDF earlier lost in Puthuppally, Palakkad and Thrikkakara Assembly segments.
The ruling CPI(M) said it accepted the people’s ruling.
Significantly, it is the first time the LDF has lost a seat held by it to its political rivals.
The Nilambur seat fell vacant after LDF-backed independent and two-time MLA P V Anvar resigned, setting off a heated political contest in the forest-fringe constituency.
Swaraj said the LDF would closely examine the results but rejected suggestions of anti-incumbency against the Left government.
Shoukath said the outcome was expected.
“It was a victory anticipated by the people of Kerala — a major win against the LDF government,” he said.
Independent candidate and two-time legislator P V Anvar delivered a strong performance in the Nilambur by-election, surprising both the UDF and the LDF.
For the Congress-led UDF, a win here would provide a much-needed boost ahead of the Assembly polls next year.
In West Bengal, the ruling Trinamool Congress candidate Alifa Ahmed won from the Kaliganj Assembly seat by a landslide margin of 50,049 votes over her nearest BJP rival Ashish Ghosh, bettering the 2021 winning margin of her father Nasiruddin Ahmed, whose demise in February this year necessitated the byelection.
After the final 23rd round of counting, Alifa bagged 1,02,759 votes compared to Ghosh who finished the race with 52,710 votes, according to figures posted by the Election Commission on its website.
The Left-supported Congress candidate Kabil Uddin Shaikh came in third with 28,348 votes.
Alifa, a 38-year-old engineer who quit her corporate job at an IT firm in Kolkata to foray into politics, attributed her victory to “people’s love” and thanked them for “reposing faith in Mamata Banerjee’s development politics”.
In a post on X, CM Mamata Banerjee said, “People of all religions, castes, races and walks of life in the area have blessed us immensely by exercising their right to vote in the by-elections to the Kaliganj Assembly constituency. I humbly express my gratitude to them.”
PTI
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