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Assembly byelections : Congress back in Goa, sweeps Haryana |
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The Congress and its allies have won four of the five Goa Assembly seats for which byelections were held last week. This has resulted in the Congress getting a majority in the Assembly with the support of its allies. A meeting of the Congress Legislature Party is to be held on June 6 to elect its leader who will stake claim to form the government in the state which is under President’s Rule at present. There are indications that the race for the Chief Ministers would be among Pratapsinh Rane, Ravi Naik and Lusinho Faleiro.
The Congress, which came under attack during the political turmoil in Goa three months ago, stormed back to power in the state and swept all the three by-elections in Haryana.
Winning three of the five by-elections in Goa on its own and with its ally NCP bagging one seat, the Congress-led United Legislature Party raised its tally to 21 in a House of 39.
The BJP won the fifth seat and raised its tally to 17. It also has the support of UGDP MLA.
Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, at present a Lok Sabha member, fulfilled the constitutional requirement of becoming a member of the assembly, when he won the Kiloi seat with a huge margin of over one lakh votes defeating INLD’s Azad Singh Attri.
Two of his party colleagues, Savitri Jindal and Kiran Choudhary, rode a sympathy wave to secure similar margins of victory in Hissar and Tosham in the wake of death of their husbands O.P. Jindal and Surender Singh, both Ministers, who were killed in a helicopter crash a few months ago.
All the seats were retained by Congress which has 67 members in a House of 90.
But the party lost in Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka where the Samajwadi Party opened its account winning the Shimoga Lok Sabha constituency. The Samajwadi Party made its Parliamentary debut from the South with former Chief Minister S Bangarappa winning the Shimoga constituency which he had quit as a BJP member to join SP a few months ago.
Elsewhere, Congress ran out of luck in the current byelections. In the Chamrajpet assembly constituency in Karnataka vacated by former Chief Minister SM Krishna, the party lost to its coalition partner JD (S).
In neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, in the Penukonda assembly constituency opposition Telugu Desam’s P. Sunita defeated her nearest Congress rival B Sriramulu by a margin of 18,850 votes.
The ruling Congress-led United Democratic Front in Kerala was dealt a severe blow when its candidates belonging to Congress and CMP lost both the byelections to CPI-M in Koothuparamba and Azhikode with record margins.
In retaining the two seats, the CPI (M)-led LDF improved on its performance in the 2001 assembly polls and bettered its lead in the last year’s Lok Sabha polls in the two segments.
In Uttar Pradesh, retaining its supremacy the ruling Samajwadi Party-RLD combine swept all the four seats to which byelections were held. SP’s nominees won in Allahabad (West), Varanasi (North) and Haiser Bazar (Reserved) while ally RLD’s candidate won in Khairagarh.
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