NEW DELHI, 6 June 2005 — India’s ruling Congress yesterday won six of the 16 state assembly by-elections held Thursday, performing well in Haryana and Goa but losing out in Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Karnataka.
By winning three of the five by-elections in Goa and with its ally NCP securing one, the Congress-led United Legislature party raised its strength to 21 in the 39-member house in Goa.
Over the past three months, Congress had been facing a political storm regarding its political standing in Goa. The state was put under President’s rule in March after two controversial confidence votes pushed BJP out of power and gave Congress the state government.
With BJP winning one seat, its tally of 17, confirms its role as the opposition party in Goa Assembly.
The Congress legislature party is expected to meet today in Panaji to elect its new leader. The Congress candidates trying for the chief ministerial position are Pratapsinh Rane, Ravi Naik and Lusinho Faleiro.
The going has been good for the Congress in Haryana also, where the party now holds 67 seats in the 90-member house. Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Huda won the Kiloi seat by defeating INLD’s Azad Singh Attri by a margin of more than 100,000 votes.
Huda, at present a Lok Sabha member, was selected as the Haryana chief minister after the Congress won the assembly elections earlier this year. In keeping with the constitutional requirement, Huda was required to become a member of the Haryana Assembly. A sympathy wave helped Congress secure similar margins of victory in Hissar and Tosham. The winning Congress candidates were Savitri Jindal and Kiran Choudhary, who joined the electoral fray following the death of their husbands O.P. Jindal and Surender Singh. Both were killed in a helicopter crash a few months ago.
Elsewhere, the Congress faced losses. The Samajwadi Party marked its entry in Karnataka, with the former Chief Minister S. Bangarappa winning the Shimoga Lok Sabha constituency. He resigned from the Lok Sabha after giving up his BJP membership to join the SP.
Though Congress and BJP tried hard to keep him out of Lok Sabha, Bangarappa demonstrated his prowess in his constituency. He defeated Ayanur Manjunath of Congress by a margin of 28,000 votes. Congress candidate R.V. Devaraj was defeated by JD (S) nominee Jamir Ahmed Khan by 3,278 votes in Chamrajpet assembly constituency in Karnataka.
In Andhra Pradesh, cashing on the sympathy wave generated by the killing of Paritala Ravi, a TDP MLA, late last year, his widow P. Sunita defeated her Congress rival B. Sriramulu by a margin of 18,850 votes in the Penukonda assembly constituency.
In Kerala, by defeating the Congress-led United Democratic Front, the CPI (M) retained Koothuparamba and Azhikode seats.
CPI-M candidate P. Jayarajan won the Kuthuparambu assembly seat by a record margin of 45,377 votes over his nearest Congress rival K. Prabhakaran. The victory margin has been identified as the biggest ever in Kerala Assembly elections.
In the Azhikode seat, CPI-M candidate M. Prakasan was declared elected by 26,376 votes over his United Democratic Front rival C.A. Ajeer of the Communist Marxist Party.
With the two assembly by-election results in Kerala going in favor of the opposition Left Democratic Front, the most jubilant with the outcome yesterday are naturally those who are Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy’s political rivals.
Reacting to the verdict, former Congress leader K. Karunakaran said he was “extremely pleased” with the results. “I had expected this to happen and we had given clear instructions to our workers to see that Chandy is taught a lesson,” said the chief of the National Congress (Indira).
In Uttar Pradesh, the ruling Samajwadi Party-RLD combine swept all the four seats to which by-elections were held. While SP nominees won in Allahabad (West), Varanasi (North) and Hainser Bazar (Reserved), RLD’s candidate bagged the Khairagarh seat.
Ashraf Ahmed won Allahabad (West) by a margin of 13,000 votes, Algu Prasad won Hainser Bazar by 94 votes and Rabia Begum won Varanasi (North) seat by 15,000 votes. The RLD’s Amar Singh was declared elected from Khairagarh.
In Goa, four of the five candidates who won were ex-Bharatiya Janata Party members who had ditched the party over the past four months and re-contested elections.
The Congress won the seats of Taleigao, Margao and Cumbharjua while its NCP alliance took the Benaulim seat. The BJP won the fifth seat — Poinguinim.
Former BJP deputy chief minister Digambar Kamat, who contested the Margao seat this time on the Congress ticket, won by 1,377 votes.
Francis Xavier ‘Micky’ Pacheco, the former BJP sports minister who had a key role in toppling the party’s government, won the Benaulim seat on the Nationalist Congress Party ticket by 2,937 votes.
Pandurang Madkaikar, a former BJP minister, won on the Congress ticket in Cumbharjua. Antanasio ‘Babush’ Monserrate of the Congress won the Taleigo seat by 6,228 votes.
Only one of the party-hopping MLAs — Isidore Fernandes — who jumped from the Congress to the BJP and back again to the Congress to cause two unprecedented by-elections in under a year — lost the Poinguinim seat to the BJP by 888 votes.
— With Input from IANS
