The Congress and TMC clean swept all 5 seats in Rajasthan and West Bengal bypolls respectively, while the BJP failed to open its account in all seats, including three it previously held in Rajasthan.
Elections were held on a total of 5 seats expanding over the two states, three in Rajasthan and 2 in West Bengal. The three in Rajasthan were earlier held by BJP.
Two Lok Sabha seats and one Assembly seat were up for grabs in Rajasthan and one Lok Sabha seat and one Assembly seat was contested in West Bengal.
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In a stunning performance, the Congress wrested Mandalgarh Assembly seat from BJP with a margin of 12,976 votes.
BJP’s Shakti Singh Hada was maintaining a lead in the beginning, however, Congress candidate Vivek Dhakad gradually reduced that margin and emerged as the winner after securing 70,146 votes.
In Alwar, Congress candidate Karan Singh Yadav defeated his nearest rival Jaswant Yadav from the BJP by 1.96 lakh votes. Yadav garnered 6,42,416 votes. In 2014, BJP had won here by 2.83 lakh votes
In Ajmer, with 61 percent of the votes in, Raghu Sharma of the Congress had 391,754 votes. The BJP’s Ram Swaroop Lamba was at 313,706 votes.
In a formidable showing, West Bengal’s ruling party Trinamool Congress wrested the Noapara Assembly seat from the Congress and retained the Uluberia Lok Sabha seat.
In the Noapara bypoll, necessitated by the death of Congress legislator Madhusudan Ghose, Trinamool’s Sunil Singh won by more than 63,000 votes over his nearest rival Sandip Banerjee of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Left Front-backed Communist Party of India-Marxist candidate Gargi Chatterjee finished a close third, after running second in the initial rounds of counting.
In Uluberia, the BJP surprised everyone by taking an early lead, but eventually TMC candidate Sajda Ahmed surged ahead and registered an emphatic win by a margin of 4,74,023 votes against Anupam Mallik of the BJP, who got 2,93,046 votes.