AAP holds sway in Delhi, BJP in Goa
The four Assembly byelections spread across three states have thrown up no big surprises. There was intense speculation, however, on whether the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) would manage to win the Bawana seat in Delhi where the byelection had been necessitated by its victor in the last election, Ved Prakash, quitting the party before the civic election in March this year and joining the BJP. That AAP’s candidate Ram Chander was able to beat Ved Prakash by a convincing margin of 24,000 votes was sweet revenge for AAP whose leader and chief minister Arvind Kejriwal worked tirelessly to redeem himself after the reverses his party suffered in Punjab and Goa inAssembly polls held a few months ago. Kejriwal, who has been under siege with a criminal defamation suit slapped against him by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had been on an unusually low key in recent months after a record of scathing attacks on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP in general. This byelection was looked upon as a test of either his continuing hold over the Delhi electorate or his impending drift into oblivion. So complete had been Kejriwal’s isolation that he was not even being invited for Opposition conclaves. The Bawana win is therefore a much-needed shot in the arm for him.
The Congress, which had mounted a concerted campaign for revival in Delhi came third after BJP in the Bawana contest. Monday’s win means that AAP now has 66 MLAs in the state assembly of 70 members, still a crushing majority. The BJP had hoped to add a fifth seat to its kitty after snatching the Rajouri constituency from AAP in another by-election earlier this year but it had to bite dust. The Congress, which had till 2013 ruled Delhi for 15 years straight, had drawn a blank in the assembly elections in 2015 and continues to have no presence in the assembly. It had fielded a seasoned politician and threetime Bawana legislator Surender Kumar in the by-election.
The two seats that went to polls in Goa-- Panaji and Valpoi –were won by the BJP. Panaji was a particularly prestigious contest with Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar seeking a reentry into the Assembly after a stint in Parliament and as the Union defence minister. Parrikar defeated his nearest rival Girish Chodankar of the Congress and has now cemented his position as chief minister. This is Parikkar’s sixth Assembly win. In the Nandyal byelection in Andhra, expectedly, the Telugu Desam candidate Bhuma Brahmananda Reddy defeated his YSR Congress rival by over 27,000 votes. Admittedly, byelection results are never an accurate index of the public mood, but one thing is clear — that the Congress is continuing to go downhill.