Win on weaker turfs in bypolls gives Congress reason to smile | India News

NEW DELHI: After defying doomsday predictions in LS polls, Congress Saturday notched major victories in the assembly bypolls in hill states of Himachal and Uttarakhand which reinforced its rising graph after a decade of slide.
In the 2024 contest, BJP made a clean sweep of the nine seats in the two states in a direct fight with Congress. But within a month, Congress came back to win Badrinath (Lakhpat Singh Butola) and Manglaur (Qazi Nizamuddin) in Uttarakhand, and cornered two of the three seats in Himachal.The significance of the victories is attested to by the fact that Congress suffered a big defeat in the 2022 Uttarakhand polls despite a groundswell in its favour, allowing BJP to buck the state’s “revolving door politics”. Since then, Congress failed to win anything there. Crucially, Badrinath poll was necessitated by the defection of Congress MLA Rajendra Bhandari to BJP during the LS polls.
The HP wins are even sweeter for the Sukhvinder Sukhu-led Congress, which survived a major jolt after six MLAs cross-voted to defeat the party’s RS candidate Abhishek Singhvi in Feb, raising questions about the survival of the state govt. Congress managed to win four of the six assembly bypolls held along with LS polls. The three bypolls on Saturday resulted from the decision of independents to join BJP. The resilience shown by Congress in Himachal is sure to hurt BJP which sensed that bypoll victories could pave the way for another attempt at the Sukhu govt.
In all, Congress is enthused by the fact that it has won on weaker turfs, coupled with the realisation that voters finally appear to be reacting to day-to-day realities instead of being taken in by the rhetoric and personality politics of BJP under Modi. Congress has also won a major bragging point with the victory in the temple town of Badrinath, after SP’s win in Ayodhya (Faizabad) in the LS contest. Observers said voters are chafing at the massive redevelopment project undertaken in Badrinath, which has left locals worried about their livelihoods because of demolition and displacement. Bhandari’s “anti-Brahmin rant” is also said to have alienated BJP’s core voters.