The Congress on Saturday won four out of 13 seats where bye-election results were held, according to the Election Commission data. The Bharatiya Janata Party, on the other hand, won two seats.

The bye-polls, held on Wednesday, were the first elections to take place after the 2024 Lok Sabha election, in which the National Democratic Alliance retained power with a reduced majority.

The votes were counted on Saturday in Raiganj, Ranaghat Dakshin, Bagda and Maniktala in West Bengal; Badrinath and Manglaur in Uttarakhand, Jalandhar West in Punjab, Dehra, Hamirpur and Nalagarh in Himachal Pradesh, Rupauli in Bihar, Vikravandi in Tamil Nadu and Amarwara in Madhya Pradesh.

The Congress has secured victory in Dehra, Nalagarh, Badrinath and Manglaur. In West Bengal, the Trinamool Congress won all four seats – Raiganj, Ranaghat Dakshin, Bagda and Maniktala.

The Aam Aadmi Party won the Jalandhar West constituency in Punjab, while the Trinamool Congress won three Assembly seats in West Bengal.

In Tamil Nadu’s Vikravandi, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhgam secured victory.

The Congress, Trinamool Congress, Aam Aadmi Party and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam are part of the Opposition INDIA bloc that fought the Lok Sabha elections against the National Democratic Alliance.

In the bye-elections, the BJP won from the Hamirpur and Amarwara constituencies.

In Bihar, independent candidate Shankar Singh won the Rupauli seat.

Punjab

The bye-polls in Jalandhar West were necessitated after Sheetal Angural resigned as Aam Aadmi Party legislator. He contested the polls on a BJP ticket and lost to Aam Aadmi Party’s Mohinder Bhagat.

Bhagat defeated Angural by 37,325 votes.

The polls were crucial for the ruling Aam Aadmi Party in the state following its disappointing performance in Punjab in the Lok Sabha polls. The Aam Aadmi Party only won three of the state’s 13 Lok Sabha seats.

Ahead of the bye-election, Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann and his family relocated to Jalandhar to consolidate his party’s voter base in the constituency.

Himachal Pradesh

In Himachal Pradesh, the Dehra, Hamirpur and Nalagarh seats fell vacant after the three independent legislators – Hoshiyar Singh from Dehra, Ashish Sharma from Hamirpur and KL Thakur from Nalagarh – resigned from the House on March 22.

The three had voted in favour of the BJP in the Rajya Sabha polls held on February 27. They later joined the Hindutva party. The BJP fielded all three of them in the Assembly bye-election.

Uttarakhand

In Uttarakhand, the Manglaur constituency fell vacant after the death of sitting Bahujan Samaj Party MLA Sarwat Karim Ansari in October. The Badrinath seat fell vacant after sitting Congress MLA Rajendra Bhandari resigned and switched to the BJP in March.

The BJP has never won the Muslim and Dalit-dominated seat, It has been held either by the Congress or the Bahujan Samaj Party, reported The Hindu.

On Wednesday, violence and voter suppression were reported from Manglaur, according to The Indian Express.

Manglaur Congress candidate Qazi Nizamuddin, who is leading in the bye-election, had alleged that miscreants opened fire near the polling booth, but the police said there is no confirmation of this.

West Bengal

Bye-elections were held in Maniktala on account of the death of sitting Trinamool Congress MLA Sadhan Pandey in 2022. In Raiganj, Bagdah and Ranaghat Dakshin, bye-polls were necessitated as the BJP MLAs from these seats switched to the Trinamool Congress and contested the 2024 Lok Sabha election.

The BJP MLAs who switched sides were Krishna Kalyani from Raiganj, Biswajit Das from Bagdah and Mukut Mani Adhikari from Ranaghat Dakshin. All three contested the Lok Sabha election on Trinamool Congress tickets but lost to the BJP.

The Trinamool Congress had fielded Kalyani from Raiganj and Adhikari from Ranaghat Dakshin for the Assembly bye-election. From Bagdah, the party nominated Madhuparna Thakur as Das reportedly did not want to contest the election.