By-elections are being held in four Assembly constituencies in four different parts of the country on Monday 23 September. The seats that are voting are:
- Hamirpur (Uttar Pradesh)
- Pala (Kerala)
- Dantewada (Chhattisgarh)
- Badharghat (Tripura)
The results will be declared on 27 September. Except Pala, all three seats were held by the BJP. Let’s look at the battle lines in all these seats.
Hamirpur: SP-BSP Break-Up Makes it Advantage BJP
The by-election in Hamirpur was necessitated because sitting BJP MLA Ashok Kumar Chandel was convicted in a over two-decade old murder case. The party has fielded Yuvraj Singh, who hails from a prominent Thakur family in Hamirpur and has been part of Congress and Samajwadi Party in the past.
BJP would fancy its chances of retaining the seat given the party’s impressive performance in Uttar Pradesh in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and the fact that the Mahagathbandhan between the SP and the Bahujan Samaj Party has ended.
In fact, BSP supremo Mayawati has departed from her policy of not contesting by-elections and has fielded a candidate Naushad Ali. By fielding a Muslim candidate, the BSP could eat into the SP’s traditional support base.
SP supporters, meanwhile, say that the BSP candidate is an outsider and has been fielded only to affect the SP’s chances and help the BJP. The SP has fielded Manoj Kumar Prajapati, who is an OBC.
The Congress has fielded Hardeepak Nishad, who hails from the Mallah OBC caste. With Priyanka Gandhi spearheading the Congress’ attempts at reviving its fortunes in Uttar Pradesh, the party is hoping to at least come second and emerge as the main alternative to the BJP in the state.
All the three Opposition parties hope that people will vote based on local issues and that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and national issues won’t be a factor in the bypoll.
Pala Votes Without KM Mani After Over 50 Years
Pala holds the record for electing the same candidate for the maximum number of times – Kerala Congress leader KM Mani represented Pala without break from 1967 till his death in 2019. He won as many as 12 elections from Pala in these 52 years.
The Kerala Congress (Mani), which is an ally of the Congress, has fielded Jose Tom Pulikunnel while the ruling Left Democratic Front has given the ticket to NCP’s Mani C Kappen. BJP has fielded its Kottayam district president N Hari.
Given that Pala has been a Kerala Congress (Mani) bastion, the party expects to retain the seat. But despite Mani’s dominance, margins in the seat have often been low and this gives some hope to the LDF and the BJP.
Despite being a marginal player in the seat historically, BJP has improved considerably in Pala. In 2016, N Hari secured nearly 18 percent votes as the BJP candidate.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, NDA candidate from Kottayam PC Thomas got over 26,000 votes in the Pala segment, just 7,000 behind the LDF nominee. The LDF on the other hand, lost ground to both the BJP and the Congress-led UDF.
The BJP is hoping to improve this performance by consolidating Hindu votes in a seat where Christians, particularly Catholics, are dominant. However, it won’t be easy for the party to upstage the UDF.
The seat is the UDF’s to lose. The Congress’ Kerala unit was particularly apprehensive that the pro-Modi statements of party leaders like Shashi Tharoor could alienate its core voters in the Pala bypoll.
This was part of the reason why its leaders, like Mullappally Ramachandran and TN Prathapan, reacted aggressively to Tharoor’s comments. Retaining Pala would boost the UDF morale ahead of the next set of bypolls in October.
Badharghat is BJP’s to Lose
Like Pala in Kerala, Tripura’s Badharghat constituency is also witnessing a triangular contest between the BJP, Congress and the Left. The bypoll was necessitated due to the death of BJP leader Dilip Sarkar in April this year.
He had joined the BJP in 2016 and was with the Trinamool Congress and the Congress before that. A veteran from the seat, he had won from Badharghat as a Congress candidate in 1988, 1998, 2008 and 2013, and in 2018 on a BJP ticket.
BJP has fielded Mimi Majumdar in the bypoll and up against her are Ratan Das of the Congress and Bulti Karmakar of the CPM. The seat is reserved for Scheduled Caste candidates.
BJP would hope to continue its winning spree in Tripura – since its win in civic elections as well as the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
The Left Front is hoping to stage a revival in a state which it ruled for 25 years continuously, until it lost to the BJP in 2018.
The wildcard in the state is the Congress. After being decimated in the 2018 Assembly polls, the party staged a sudden revival under the leadership of Pradyot Manikya Deb Barman.
From a dismal 1.8 percent vote share in the 2018 Assembly polls, the party surged to over 25 percent in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, overtaking the Left Front.
The party hopes to consolidate its gains and emerge as the main Opposition party in the state.
Dantewada: Wives of Slain Leaders Battle it Out
The bypoll in Dantewada is not just crucial from a political point of view but also a security one. On 9 April this year, BJP MLA from Dantewada Bhima Mandavi was killed along with four policemen in an IED blast caused by Naxal insurgents in Shyamgiri village.
Over 18,000 security personnel have been deployed in Dantewada for the bypoll and the polling will take place from 7 AM to 3 PM, earlier than the usual timings.
The seat is witnessing a battle between wives of leaders killed in Naxal attacks, with the BJP fielding Mandavi’s wife Ojaswi and the Congress nominating Mahendra Karma’s wife Devti.
In the 2018 Assembly polls, Devti had lost to Bhima Mandavi by a narrow margin of a little over 2000 votes.
The bypoll is also being seen as a battle between a current and former collector.
BJP’s campaign in the seat is being spearheaded by former civil servant OP Chaudhary, who had also been the collector of Dantewada in the past. The Congress has accused Chaudhary of misusing his network as collector for the BJP’s election campaign.
The BJP, on its part, has accused sitting collector Topeshwar Verma of being a “Congress agent” and said that he deliberately disallowed former CM Raman Singh from campaigning in Dantewada. They also say that Verma is a relative of sitting Congress CM Bhupesh Baghel.
Also in the fray are Bhimsen Mandavi of CPI, Hemant Poyam of BSP and Sujit Karma of Ajit Jogi’s Janata Congress Chhattisgarh.
Dantewada has alternated between the BJP and the Congress since 2003, with the Congress winning in 2003 and 2013 and the BJP winning the seat in 2008 and 2018. The CPI also has some presence in the seat.
The ruling Congress would fancy its chances of winning the seat as even in the middle of the Modi wave in the Lok Sabha elections, the party managed to win Bastar under which Dantewada falls.
Who Stands Where
The best case scenario for the BJP would be to win Hamirpur, Badharghat and Dantewada and improve its vote share in Pala. A defeat in any of these three seats would be an embarrassment for the BJP and it would send the signal that the party’s advantage due to PM Modi’s popularity is restricted to Lok Sabha elections.
Besides the UDF retaining Pala, the Congress would look to wrest Dantewada from the BJP. It would particularly be a shot in the arm for CM Baghel after the party’s below par performance in the recent Lok Sabha polls.
The Congress would also hope to at least come second in Badharghat and Hamirpur, which would strengthen its case as the only Opposition to the BJP in the country.
These elections are crucial for the Left Parties as well and they would be desperate to win Pala and Badharghat and improve their vote share in Dantewada. But, if their vote share continues to fall in these seats, it would be bad news for the Left.
The BSP would hope to win Hamirpur and improve its vote share in Dantewada. At the very least, the party would hope to increase its vote share in these two seats and send the signal that the party remains a force to reckon with.
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