BJP wins four seats in bypolls

New Delhi: The BJP has won in Uttar Pradesh's Gola Gokrannath, Haryana's Adampur and Odisha's Dhamnagar. The party also retained Bihar's Gopalganj assembly seat which falls in the home district of party leader and former Chief Minister Lalu Yadav, the father of Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav.

The RJD (Rashtriya Janata Dal), meanwhile, has won the Mokama assembly seat by over 16,000 votes while the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena faction won the Mumbai's Andheri East seat by over 67,000 votes.

In Telangana, K Chandrashekar's Rao's Telangana Rashtriya Samithi has won Munugode after a close contest with the BJP.

While the results are likely to upset the math for current state governments, the contests are seen as a battle for family legacy in Haryana and prestige battles in Telangana, Bihar and Maharashtra.

With regional parties putting up a united front for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections - just a year and a half away - the poll results could serve as booster shots, or perception busters, depending on the results

The fierce battle is between Bharatiya Janata Party and regional parties such as the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), the Samajwadi Party (SP), and the Biju Janata Dal (BJD).

BJP's Bhavya Bishnoi, a grandson of late Haryana Chief Minister Bhajan Lal, on Sunday retained family stronghold Adampur, defeating former Union minister and a three-time MP Jai Prakash of the Congress by a margin of 15,714 votes in the assembly bypoll.

Late Bhajan Lal's family has won 16 elections in a row since 1968 from Adampur.

Bishnoi is the fifth member of the Bhajan Lal family to contest from the family bastion. Earlier, his grandfather Bhajan Lal, grandmother Jasma Devi, father Kuldeep Bishnoi and mother Renuka Bishnoi had represented the seat.

A total of 22 candidates were in the fray in the by-election. The INLD has fielded Congress rebel Kurda Ram Nambardar, while AAP fielded Satender Singh, a BJP rebel.

Bishnoi lost his debut Lok Sabha elections from the Hisar constituency in 2019 as a Congress candidate. He is facing probe by the Enforcement Directorate under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) and is currently out on bail.

The bypoll was necessitated after Kuldeep Bishnoi resigned as lawmaker and switched loyalties from the Congress to the BJP in August.

In the 2019 Assembly elections, Kuldeep Bishnoi had won this seat by defeating BJP's Sonali Phogat by a margin of 29,417 votes.