Counting begins at 8 a.m. and results are usually expected by noon. (Image for representation)
New Delhi:
Election results in seven assembly seats in six states will be announced today. Prestige battles are being fought in Bihar and Telangana, and a family legacy is at stake in Haryana.
Here are 10 points that summarize what these elections mean:
-
After the first rounds of counting, the BJP is leading in Uttar Pradesh’s Gola Gokrannath, Haryana’s Adampur, Bihar’s Gopalganj and Odisha’s Dhamnagar, and Rashtriya Janata Dal, led by Tejashwi Yadav, is ahead in Bihar’s Mokama. Rao de K Chandrashekar’s Telangana Rashtriya Samithi is ahead in Munugode and the Shiv Sena faction led by Uddhav Thackeray is poised to win in Mumbai’s Andheri East seat.
-
Of the seven seats, the BJP had three, the Congress two, while the Shiv Sena and RJD each had one before the by-votes were needed. Two of the seats are in Bihar and one each in UP, Haryana, Maharashtra, Telangana and Odisha.
-
Bihar is seeing the first contest, by two seats, since Nitish Kumar left the BJP to revive the JDU’s alliance with Tejashwi Yadav’s RJD. RJD candidate Neelam Devi, wife of Anant Singh, who was disqualified after being convicted of illegal weapons possession, heads Mokama. In Gopalganj, the RJD hopes to drive out the BJP that has occupied it for nearly two decades. He has pitted Mohan Prasad Gupta against the BJP’s Kusum Devi, whose husband Subhas Singh needed the election by death.
-
In Haryana, former Prime Minister Bhajan Lal’s family seat Adampur will decide whether his grandson Bhavya Bishnoi can carry on the 68-year-old legacy after moving from Congress to the BJP. Bhavya’s father, Kuldeep Bishnoi, who brought the family into the BJP, resigned as the Adampur MLA when he defected, leading to this secondary poll.
-
Maharashtra’s Andheri East is seeing two firsts. It is the first election fight after the Shiv Sena was split in two when Eknath Shinde ousted Uddhav Thackeray to become Chief Minister with the help of BJP. And it is the first time in decades that the Thackeray-led Sena is fighting under a new name, Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), and a new symbol, the ‘mashaal’ or flaming torch.
-
Shiv Sena (Uddhav) candidate Rutuja Latke is the widow of former Sena MLA from Andheri (East), who died after a heart attack in May 2022 in Dubai. The BJP had withdrawn its candidate as part of “political tradition” in the polls required by the death of a leader.
-
In Telangana, Munugode watched the ruling TRS and its sworn rival BJP fight it out on the ground and made accusations involving “rupee crores”, especially given Prime Minister K Chandrashekar Rao’s ambition to challenge Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2024. Here the Congressional MLA had resigned and is now fighting on the BJP ticket.
-
In Odisha’s Dhamnagar, too, the regional ruling BJD party is facing off against the BJP. The BJP won it last time, but the death of MLA Bishnu Charan Sethi led to this contest. He has deployed his son.
-
In its UP stronghold, the BJP seeks to retain Gola Gokarannath’s seat, which became vacant after the death of its MLA Arvind Giri on September 6. The BSP and Congress are staying away, so it’s a direct fight between Arvind Giri’s son, Aman Giri. (BJP) and Vinay Tiwari of the Samajwadi Party, former MLA.
-
Neither of these contests is likely to alter the math for current state governments. But with regional parties seeking to put together a united front for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, just a year and a half away, they could serve as either perception boosters or destroyers, depending on the results.
