Bhopal, Nov 24 (IANS) The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) now has 165 legislators while there are 64 Congress MLAs in the 230-seat Assembly after the results of the bypolls in two Assembly seats — Vijaypur and Budhni — in Madhya Pradesh were announced on Saturday.
While the ruling BJP retained Budhni, the stronghold of Union Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, in a closely fought political contest and secured a seventh consecutive victory since 2003, the Opposition Congress too secured a thumping victory in Vijaypur.
BJP’s Ramakant Bhargava, who is said to be a loyalist of Shivraj Singh Chouhan, won the Budhni bypoll with a margin of 13,901 votes contesting against former Minister and Congress nominee Rajkumar Patel, who is considered a close confidante of former Chief Minister Digvijaya Singh.
However, the victory margin for Bhargava was more than nine times lower than Chouhan’s 2023 Assembly poll victory margin of 1.04 lakh-plus votes from the seat.
After the bypoll results were announced, newly elected BJP MLA Bhargava credited his victory for the development of work done under the previous Shivraj Singh Chouhan-led government.
“I won the bypoll because Shivraj Singh Chouhan has worked for several decades for the people of Budhni. I bow down my head to the people of Budhni,” Bhargava added.
The bypoll in Budhni was necessitated after sitting BJP MLA and four-time MP Shivraj Singh Chouhan resigned from the Assembly following his victory in the Lok Sabha polls from Vidisha constituency earlier this year.
Former CM Chouhan has won five consecutive elections from Budhni Assembly seat between 2006 and 2023.
In the Vijaypur Assembly seat of Gwalior-Chambal region, Congress leader Mukesh Malhotra defeated BJP’s Ramniwas Rawat, a sitting Minister in Chief Minister Mohan Yadav-led government, with a margin of more than 7,000 votes.
Interestingly, former MLA Ramniwas Rawat, who had won six elections (between 1990 and 2023) from Vijaypur on Congress’ symbol, was contesting his seventh election, but it was his first as a BJP candidate.
He had won the Assembly election held in November 2023 with a margin of more than 17,000 votes, however, later he resigned from the party and joined the BJP, which necessitated a bypoll in Vijaypur.
Reacting to Malhotra’s victory, State Congress Chief Jitu Patwari said, “Vijaypur’s victory is that of the Congress workers, who faced all kinds of torture. They endured police lathicharge and lawsuits, but still, they stood firm. Chief Minister Mohan Yadav congratulated both (Ramkant Bhargava and Mukesh Malhotra) newly-elected MLAs. He also said that BJP may have lost the Vijaypur bypoll but its vote share had increased.”
“Even though Ramniwas Rawat had to face defeat in Vijaypur, the party’s votes have increased there. The BJP’s double-engine government in Madhya Pradesh will continue to take the state’s journey of development forward. In the coming elections, the party will register a massive victory in Vijaypur as well,” CM Yadav said.
With this, the number of BJP legislators in the Assembly rose to 165 from 163 when it won the November 2023 elections.
BJP had already won Amarwara bypolls and one more sitting Congress MLA Nirmala Sapre from Bina Assembly constituency had also joined the saffron party.
While the Opposition which had won 66 seats in November 2023 polls, but lost one (Amarwara bypoll) and two of its party leaders joined the BJP, including Ramniwas Rawat, has now 64 MLAs out of the total 230-seat Assembly in the state. While one seat was bagged by the Bharat Adivasi Party (BAP).
–IANS
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