Cong bags 4 seats, BJP secures one in the Hills
HIMACHAL CM SUKHVINDER SINGH SUKHU’S WIFE KAMLESH THAKUR WON THE DEHRA ASSEMBLY CONSTITUENCY
DEHRADUN/SHIMLA: The Congress on Saturday won both assembly seats in Uttarakhand where bypolls were held on July 10, snatching the Manglaur constituency from the Bahujan Samaj Party, and retaining the Badrinath constituency.
The party also scored a victory in Himachal Pradesh, where it won two seats, with chief minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu’s wife Kamlesh Thakur winning the Dehra assembly constituency.
The results of the by-elections, Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera said, were proof that “people have rejected BJP’s politics”.
In Uttarakhand, Congress’s Qazi Mohammad Nizamuddin won the seat for the fourth time edging out BJP’s Kartar Singh Bhadana by a narrow margin of 422 votes. Nizamuddin won the seat twice on a BSP ticket and once on a Congress ticket in the past.
The BSP, which had won the seat in the 2022 assembly polls, was relegated to the third position. The Congress’s victory in Manglaur takes the number of its MLAs in the 70-member Uttarakhand Assembly from 19 to 20.
The Congress held the Badrinath seat where Rajendra Bhandari had defeated state BJP president Mahendra Bhatt in 2022.
In Badrinath too, Congress’s Lakhapat Butola, a relative newcomer who contested from an assembly seat for the first time in the bypoll, scored an upset victory over former minister and MLA Rajendra Bhandari of the BJP whose resignation as an MLA just before the Lok Sabha polls had necessitated a bypoll to the seat. Butola defeated Bhandari by 5,224 votes.
Former chief minister and Congress leader Harish Rawat thanked the voters for not succumbing to the BJP’s “pressure”, and for choosing the Congress.
In neighbouring Himachal, Thakur defeated BJP candidate Hoshiyar Singh by a margin of 9,399 votes. In the Nalagarh assembly bypoll, Congress’s Hardeep Singh Bawa defeated BJP’s KL Thakur by 8,990 votes.
However, the Hamirpur seat went to the BJP after its leader Ashish Sharma defeated his closest rival, Congress leader Pushpinder Verma, by a margin of 1,571 votes.