New Delhi:
The verdict of by-elections held on September 13 in three Lok Sabha and 32 assembly seats across nine states will be announced today. The results hold high stakes for the ruling BJP, which took power in May and hopes to prove that its popularity hasn't waned in the first three months of its government.
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Vadodara in Gujarat, vacated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is one of the three Lok Sabha seats where votes are being counted. PM Modi won Vadodara by nearly six lakh votes, the highest victory margin in the May election, but he chose to retain Varanasi in UP, the second constituency that he won.
Mainpuri in Uttar Pradesh vacated by Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav is also witnessing a prestige battle. Mr Yadav's grand-nephew Tej Pratap Singh Yadav is making his debut from this seat and the challenge for the party is not just to win the seat but to win by a huge margin.
The third Lok Sabha constituency is Medak in Telangana, India's newest state. The seat was vacated by Telangana Rashtra Samithi Chief K Chandrasekhar Rao after he became the state's first Chief Minister.
Among the assembly seats, 11 are in Uttar Pradesh, nine in Gujarat, four in Rajasthan, two in West Bengal, five in Northeastern states and one in Andhra Pradesh.
24 of these assembly seats were held by the BJP and one each by its allies Apna Dal and Telugu Desam Party (TDP).
After the BJP's near-total sweep of the 80 seats in Uttar Pradesh in Lok Sabha polls just four months ago, the party has campaigned hard to retain 10 assembly seats. The party's star campaigner for these polls was four-time MP Yogi Adityanath, who was booked for defying a rally ban and reprimanded by the Election Commission for a hate speech in April.
In by-polls last month in Bihar, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Punjab, the BJP's score was less than impressive.
In Bihar, the alliance of former rivals Lalu Prasad Yadav and Nitish Kumar, along with the Congress, scored an impressive six out of 10 assembly seats. The BJP won four, which rivals said reflected voters' disappointment in three months of the new government.
The BJP also yielded two strongholds to the Congress in Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh.
The next round of polling will be held on October 15, when two major Congress-ruled states, Maharashtra and Haryana, will vote for new assemblies. The verdict will be announced on October 19.
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