BJP secures govt in Madhya Pradesh, sweeps UP, Gujarat, Karnataka bypolls

NEW DELHI: The BJP swept the bypolls to 59 seats, results of which were declared on Tuesday, comfortably retaining power in Madhya Pradesh and silencing its critics in Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka, where it won 16 out of 17 seats.

In MP, Shivraj Singh Chouhan led the party to decisive leads in 19 out of the 28 seats that went to the bypolls. The party had leads in around ten out of the 16 seats in the Gwalior-Chambal region which is considered the stronghold of Jyotiraditya Scindia,, who had joined the BJP in March and brought down the Kamal Nath government in the state.

The BJP needed only eight seats to attain the majority figure in the state. As per the Election Commission, the BJP polled close to 50% votes against 41% by the Congress. Among the prominent winners from the BJP were ministers Pradhuman Singh Tomar and Tulsiram Silawat while Imrati Devi, whom Nath had called an “item”, was trailing narrowly.


In UP, the BJP bagged six out of seven seats with big margins while the Samajwadi Party won one seat. The BJP had held the six seats earlier. Even with the Hathras rape and murder incident still fresh in public memory, Adityanath won with his appeals of razing properties of criminals to the ground in western UP and provision of 300,000 government jobs. Adityanath called the results a "repetition of BJP’s performance in 2017 and 2019 and a signal of how well the party could perform in upcoming assembly polls in 2022”.

The ruling BJP bagged all the eight seats in Gujarat which had fallen vacant after the Congress MLAs from these constituencies had resigned in the wake of the Rajya Sabha polls earlier this year. With this, the strength of the Congress in Gujarat got reduced to 65 while the BJP increased its tally to 111.

The results came as a shot in the arm for the newly elected Gujarat BJP president CR Patil, who had vowed to bag all eight seats, and also as a relief for the CM Vijay Rupani, who had made an exception to campaign for the party during these by-elections.

In Karnataka, the BJP won the bypolls to the two keenly contested constituencies – Rajarajeshwari Nagar in Bengaluru and Sira in Tumkur. This is the first victory for the BJP in Sira in the Old Mysuru region, which has been a stronghold of the Congress and the JD(S). The bypolls were seen as critical for CM BS Yediyurappa to strengthen his position in the party amid talk of change in leadership.