Are the Bypoll Results a Warning Sign for the BJP?

The BJP’s track record in the Lok Sabha bypolls held since 2014 has been poor, and it has only gotten worse.

Samajwadi Party supporters celebrate after victory in Noorpur Assembly seat

(Photo: PTI)

Video Editor: Vishal Kumar

BJP wins 1 out of 4 Lok Sabha seats

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s track record in the Lok Sabha bypolls held since 2014 has been poor, and it has only gotten worse. Till now, out of the 27 Lok Sabha by-elections held since the Narendra Modi-led BJP came to power, it has managed to win only five of them.

Apart from the victory in Maharashtra’s Palghar on Thursday, 31 March, the four other seats that the BJP has won are Maharashtra’s Beed, Gujarat’s Vadodara, Assam’s Lakhimpur and Madhya Pradesh’s Shahdol.

The BJP lost Uttar Pradesh’s Kairana to RLD and Maharashtra’s Bhandara-Gondia to the NCP, while the NDPP won in Nagaland.

The saffron party, however, has claimed that it is only preparing to take a giant leap forward.

To take a giant leap, you will have to take two steps back. We will take a giant leap in the future.

Rajnath Singh, Union Home Minister

BJP Wins 1 out of 10 Assembly Seats

Like in the Lok Sabha seats, the by-poll results in the 10 Assembly seats have also been disappointing for the BJP, which has managed to retain only one seat.

BJP wins one out of 10 Assembly seats.(Photo: The Quint)

Congress wins the Assembly seats.(Photo: The Quint)

The Congress termed Thursday’s outcome as the people's mandate against the four years of the Narendra Modi rule and the beginning of the end of BJP's empire.

Terming the outcome of the bypolls in Kairana and Noorpur in Uttar Pradesh as a defeat of divisive politics, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav said the voters had delivered a befitting response to the BJP.

It is a defeat of divisive politics. It is victory of farmers, Dalits, poor and workers.

Akhilesh Yadav, SP president