Priyanka wins Wayanad Lok Sabha seat by over 4.1 lakh votes

Jaipur: The BJP won five of the seven seats in the Rajasthan Assembly bypolls, the results of which were announced on Saturday.

Congress and Bharat Adivasi Party (BAP) bagged one seat each, according to the Election Commission (EC).

BJP's Rajendra Bhamboo won Jhunjhunu, Rajendra Gurjar won Deoli-Uniara, Rewant Ram Danga won Khinwsar, Shanta Amrit Lal Meena won Salumbar and Sukhavant Singh won Ramgarh.

BAP candidate Anil Kumar Katara won the Chorasi seat and Congress won Dausa.

The BJP fielded Cabinet minister Kirodi Lal Meena's brother Jag Mohan from Dausa seat. The defeat came as a blow to Meena and the ruling BJP.

Of the seven seats where the bypolls were held on November 13, the Congress held four and the BJP, the RLP and the BAP one each.

After winning the Chorasi seat, the BAP will now have four MLAs in the 200-member Rajasthan Assembly and the RLP will have none.

The 200-member Rajasthan Legislative Assembly now has 119 MLAs of the BJP, 66 of the Congress, four of the BAP, two of the BSP, one of the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) and eight independents. - PTI

Lucknow: Rashtriya Lok Dal's Mithlesh Pal on Saturday won the Assembly bypoll from Uttar Pradesh's Meerapur, according to the Election Commission.

Pal, who bagged 84,304 votes, defeated her nearest rival Sumbul Rana of the Samajwadi Party by 30,796 votes. Zahid Hussain of the Aazad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram) finished third with 22,661 votes, while Shahnazar of the Bahujan Samaj Party came fifth with 3,248 votes. The bypoll in Meerapur was necessitated after sitting MLA Chandan Chauhan of the RLD got elected to the Lok Sabha from Bijnor earlier this year. - PTI

New Delhi: Will she? Will she not? And on Saturday, she did. After years of frenzied speculation, Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is finally entering the Lok Sabha after a resounding win from Wayanad with many a hope that she will re-energise her party and its dwindling electoral fortunes. The 52-year-old, who joins her mother Sonia and brother Rahul as an MP in what is a rare instance of three members of a family together in Parliament, would visit Parliament as a teenager to listen to her father Rajiv Gandhi speak as prime minister.

Four decades later, she joins as member herself -- her detractors crying nepo politics and her party supporters laying out the proverbial red carpet for a promise finally met. She should have been a politician to the manner born given the Gandhi legacy. But Priyanka Gandhi took the long and winding way into mainstream politics. First were the questions of whether the mother of two would join active politics, and then whether and when she would contest elections. In September 1999, she told a journalist her entry into politics may take a "long, long time".

And it actually did. She took the plunge 20 years later in 2019 and was later appointed Congress general secretary. Five years after that, Priyanka Gandhi begins her journey as an elected representative of the people. With a winning margin of more than 4.1 lakh votes, she has surpassed the tally of her brother Rahul Gandhi from Wayanad in Kerala. Priyanka Gandhi's entry into Parliament comes at a difficult time for the party, which has been jolted by electoral defeats in Haryana and Maharashtra. It would be interesting to see if she is able give a much-needed fillip to the grand old party and help put it back on electoral track.

Often drawing comparisons with her grandmother Indira Gandhi for their similarity in looks and way of speaking, Priyanka Gandhi has been the go-to campaigner for the party since her entry into active politics and even before that when she campaigned for her mother Sonia and brother Rahul. And more than both, she is the one who many say has the easiest touch when it comes to communicating with people, individuals and crowds, and also in articulating the party's viewpoint on a range of issues.

That she is often seen with her brother, sometimes teasing, sometimes chiding and always affectionate, has added to the image of the convivial politician. Frequently referring to her childhood, the pain of her father Rajiv Gandhi's assassination and her mother's grief, she steered the Congress' campaign during the general election, adroitly walking the tightrope between striking a familial chord and discussing national-level issues. She proved to be a strategist, orator and mass mobiliser -- all rolled into one. Most of her speeches are akin to a conversation with the crowd, establishing a connect and giving people the impression that here was a person who was known to them, someone sharing her feelings and thoughts with them. As star campaigner and strategiser, Priyanka Gandhi helped the Congress make impressive gains in some states as well as in the Lok Sabha polls held earlier in the year.

Her campaign helped the Congress get 99 seats in the general election, up from 52 in 2019. As the curtains came down on the 2024 general election, analysts totted up the numbers to highlight that she has proven to be the party's talisman. Priyanka Gandhi took part in 108 public meetings and roadshows. She campaigned in 16 states and a Union territory, and also addressed two party workers' conferences in Amethi and Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh. Priyanka Gandhi has often been projected as a possible challenger to Prime Minister Narendra Modi from Varanasi and also as a successor to Congress veteran Sonia Gandhi in the family pocket borough of Rae Bareli. Soon after the Election Commission announced the Wayanad bypoll, the Congress declared that Priyanka Gandhi would be its candidate from the seat in Kerala. Rahul Gandhi, it decided, would retain the Rae Bareli parliamentary constituency in Uttar Pradesh and vacate the Wayanad seat he won for the second consecutive time.

After her name was announced for the Wayanad bypoll in June, Priyanka Gandhi said, "I am not nervous at all.... I am very happy to be able to represent Wayanad. All I will say is that I will not let them feel his (Rahul Gandhi's) absence. I will work hard and try my best to make everybody happy and be a good representative." "I have a good relationship with Rae Bareli as I worked there for 20 years and that relationship will never break," she said, adding that both she and her brother will work together in both the constituencies. Priyanka Gandhi was made Congress general secretary in-charge of the crucial eastern Uttar Pradesh region in January 2019 and then general secretary in-charge of the entire state.

In December 2023, Priyanka Gandhi was made Congress general secretary "without a portfolio". She helped strengthen the organisation and led the party's campaign in Himachal Pradesh, where the grand old party wrested power from the BJP. Born on January 12, 1972, Priyanka attended New Delhi's Modern School and the Convent of Jesus and Mary. She holds a bachelor's degree in Psychology from Jesus and Mary College, University of Delhi, and also has a master's degree in Buddhist studies. Priyanka Gandhi is married to businessman Robert Vadra. The couple has two children -- Raihan and Miraya. Her entry into Parliament has been long awaited by party's workers and supporters and they are hoping she will provide the booster shot the party needs in its difficult phase at the hustings going forward. - PTI

Kolkata: The TMC swept bypolls in West Bengal on Saturday, retaining five seats and wresting Madarihat from BJP, further cementing its political dominance in West Bengal, even as the ongoing protests over the RG Kar incident failed to sway voters. The bypolls were held in six constituencies — Naihati, Haroa, Medinipur, Taldangra, Sitai (SC), and Madarihat (ST) — following the resignation of MLAs who had vacated their assembly seats after securing victories in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. These elections held on November 13 were seen as a crucial test for the ruling party amid a politically charged atmosphere, with protests over the RG Kar issue intensifying. Despite these protests, the TMC emerged victorious across the board, in both rural and urban areas, continuing its winning streak of 2024 Lok Sabha polls. Five of the six constituencies are located in South Bengal, a TMC stronghold, while Madarihat is in the north, which the BJP had won in 2021.

In Haroa, where over 70 per cent of the voters belongs to the minority community, the BJP came a distant third and failed to retain its deposit, prompting party leader Suvendu Adhikari to comment: “Minorities don't vote for BJP”. The CPI(M)-led Left Front, which had hoped to capitalise on the RG Kar protests to revive its fortunes, faced a crushing defeat, losing its deposit in Sitai, Taldangra, Medinipur and Madarihat. Its ally CPI (ML) Liberation too lost its deposit in Naihati, while the All India Secular Front (ISF) faced the same fate in Haroa.

The Congress, which contested without an alliance with the Left for the first time since 2021 but fared no better, lost deposits in all six constituencies. In Sitai (SC), TMC's Sangita Roy won by a margin of 1,30,636 over BJP's Dipak Kumar Ray, who garnered only 35,348 votes. TMC's vote share surged to 76 per cent, compared to 49 per cent in the 2021 state elections, while the BJP's share plummeted from 45 per cent to just 16 per cent. The Madarihat (ST) seat, previously held by the BJP, marked another significant victory for the TMC.

The ruling party's Jayprakash Toppo won with 79,186 votes, securing a lead of 28,168 votes over BJP's Rahul Lohar. This victory is historic for the TMC, as it marks the first time the party has taken control of Madarihat, a key seat in the tea garden belt. Differences between BJP's Alipurduar MP Manoj Tigga and former union minister John Barla over selection of the candidate seem to have cost the seat for the party.

The TMC's vote share surged to 54.05 per cent, while the BJP's share dropped to 34 per cent, nearly mirroring TMC's vote share of 34.13 per cent in 2021. In Naihati, TMC's Sanat Dey won with 78,772 votes, defeating BJP's Rupak Mitra by 49,277 votes.

TMC's vote share increased to 62.97 per cent, up from 50 per cent in 2021, while BJP's share fell to 23.58 per cent, a significant drop from 38 per cent in 2021. In Haroa, TMC's SK Rabiul Islam won with 1,57,072 votes, maintaining a commanding margin of 1,31,388 votes over Piyarul Islam of the ISF, who secured only 25,684 votes. This result underscores TMC's dominance among minorities in South Bengal. TMC's vote share surged to 76.63 per cent, while the ISF managed just 12.53 per cent, compared to 57.34 per cent for the TMC in 2021. In Medinipur, TMC's Sujoy Hazra won with 115,104 votes, a margin of 33,996 votes over BJP's Subhajit Roy, who secured 81,108 votes. TMC's vote share reached 53.43 per cent, compared to the BJP's 37.67 per cent, reflecting a similar outcome to 2021, when TMC had 50.72 per cent and the BJP had 40.51 per cent in this tribal-dominated seat. In Taldangra, TMC's Falguni Singhababu won by bagging 98,926 votes, maintaining a margin of 34,082 votes over BJP's Ananya Roy Chakraborty.

The TMC increased its vote share to 52 per cent, up from 46 per cent in 2021, while the BJP's share dropped to 34 per cent from 39.9 per cent. West Bengal Chief Minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee expressed her gratitude to the people of the state for their continued support, saying, “I would like to thank and congratulate the 'Maa, Mati, and Manush' from the bottom of my heart. Your blessings will help us work for the people in the coming days,” in a social media post.

TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee congratulated all six TMC candidates for their decisive victories, claiming they had “defied the narratives created by the Zamindars, the media, and a section of the Calcutta High Court to defame Bengal for their own vested interests.” He also expressed special thanks to the people of Madarihat. "I bow before the people of West Bengal for democratically dismantling the Bangla Birodhis, their fake narratives, and reaffirming their trust in us." BJP state president Sukanta Majumdar downplayed the significance of the results.

“Bypoll results cannot serve as a reliable indicator. Whether the people are with the TMC or against them will be reflected in the upcoming assembly elections,” Majumdar said. The Left, accused by TMC of masterminding the prolonged doctor's protests, failed to capitalise on the public anger surrounding the RG Kar incident, losing in all constituencies. Since the 2021 assembly elections, the TMC has won every by-election, except the Sagardighi bypoll in March 2023, which was later won by a Congress candidate who later switched to the TMC. With this victory, TMC's tally in the 294-member state assembly rises to 216, further consolidating its position. The BJP's tally drops to 69, from 77 in 2021. PTI

Jaipur: The BJP won five of the seven seats in the Rajasthan Assembly bypolls, results of which were announced on Saturday. The Bharat Adivasi Party (BAP) bagged one seat and the Congress was on course to win one, according to the Election Commission (EC).

BJP's Rajendra Bhamboo won Jhunjhunu, Rajendra Gurjar won Deoli-Uniara, Rewant Ram Danga won Khinwsar, Shanta Amrit Lal Meena won Salumbar and Sukhavant Singh won Ramgarh. BAP candidate Anil Kumar Katara won Chorasi seat. The Congress is set to win Dausa, where its candidate Deen Dayal was in the lead after all rounds of counting had been completed. The official declaration of the result is awaited. The BJP fielded cabinet minister Kirodi Lal Meena's brother Jag Mohan from Dausa seat and his defeat would be a jolt to Meena. Of the seven seats where the bypolls were held on November 13, Congress held four and BJP, RLP and BAP held one each. After winning Chorasi seat, the BAP will now have four MLAs in the 200-member Rajasthan Assembly and the RLP will have none. - PTI