BJP and Congress share honours in Lok Sabha, Assembly bypolls

NEW DELHI: The BJP and Congress on Sunday shared honours in the Lok Sabha and Assembly bye-elections in 13 states.

The bypolls were held in four parliamentary constituencies in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu and 12 Assembly seats spread across 10 states. Except for the Kanyakumari Lok Sabha seat and the Malappuram Lok Sabha seat in Kerala, where polling was held on April 6, bypolls in rest of the constituencies were conducted on April 17. In the Assembly bypolls, the BJP won or was leading in 5 seats, the Congress four and the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) and Zoram People’s Movement (ZPM) one seat each. The results, however, would have no bearing on the immediate future of the respective governments.

Maddila Gurumoorthy of the YSR Congress Party won the Tirupati Lok Sabha seat in Andhra Pradesh by beating Panabaka Lakshmi of the Telugu Desam by a huge margin of 2,71,592 votes.

BJP’s Angadi Mangal Suresh pocketed the Belgaum Lok Sabha constituency with Satish Laxmanarao Jarkiholi of the Congress coming second. The victory margin was 5,240 votes. Abdussamad Samadani of the Indian Union Muslim League won the Malappuram Lok Sabha seat in Kerala defeating V P Sanu of the CPM by a margin of 1,14,615 votes. The Congress won two of the three Assembly seats in Rajasthan where bypolls were held with BJP emerging victorious in the third.

In Karnataka, while the BJP won the Basavakalyan Assembly constituency, the Congress was able to retain the Maski seat. In Madhya Pradesh, Ajay Kumar Tandon was leading from the Damoh seat and in a setback to the ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi in Maharashtra, BJP candidate Autade Samadhan Mahadev was ahead of his nearest NCP’s Bhalke Bhagirath Bharat in the Pandharpur-Mangalvedha Assembly seat.

BJP’s Mahesh Jeena won Salt Assembly by-elections in Uttarakhand.