The counting has been underway for seven assembly seats in six states where by-polls were held recently. The BJP won most seats with Uddhav Thackeray’s party registering a big victory in Andheri East in Mumbai. Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party has been rejected by voters in the AAP leader’s home state of Haryana.
According to the Election Commission of India, the RJD has won the Mokama seat in Bihar, where its candidate Neelam Devi defeated BJP’s Sonam Devi by over 16,000 votes. However, the BJP won the Gopalganj seat, where Kusum Devi emerged victorious by a margin of around 2,000 votes over RJD’s Mohan Prasad Gupta with AIMIM candidate polling more than 12,000 votes.
In Uttar Pradesh, BJP’s Aman Giri polled more than 124,000 votes in Gola Gokranath against Samajwadi Party’s Vinay Tiwari, who lost the seat by more than 34,000 votes.
In Haryana’s Adampur, BJP’s Bhavya Bishnoi defeated Congress’Jai Prakash by more than 15,000 votes. Aam Aadmi Party’s Satinder Singh was placed at a distant third with just 3,400 votes. Haryana is the home state of Kejriwal, who has been dreaming of forming a government here after his party won a landslide in Punjab earlier this year.
In Maharashtra, Uddhav Thackeray’s newly formed party, Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), won the Andheri East seat without much trouble. Rutuja Ramesh Latke, who recently resigned as a clerk in the BMC to contest the election, had polled more than 65,000 votes. The BJP had withdrawn its candidate. The Congress and the NCP, both parts of the alliance that governed Maharashtra until Eknath Shinde split the Shiv Sena recently, too did not field their candidates.
In Telangana, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi was taking a thin lead over the BJP during the counting. But in Odisha’s Dhamnagar, the BJP defeated the ruling Biju Janata Dal candidate, Abanti Das, by over 9,000 votes.
