Clearly, the BJP has reasserted the upper hand in politics as it won four of the seven seats that went to the by-polls in six states. The party won four seats, across Haryana, UP, Bihar and Odisha while one seat each went to the Shiv Sena in Mumbai (Maharashtra), the RJD in Bihar and the TRS in Telangana. The BJP has reasons to cheer as, other than the isolated wins for regional parties, the party proved to have retained the people’s trust overall. In fact, this is reflective of the current national political scenario wherein the BJP remains unassailable in the Hindi belt, which is where the decision on who should rule India is made.
The other parts of the country always account for fragmented verdicts also due to the sway of the regional outfits, be it in the south, north-east or even the eastern sector. Yet, in Odisha, the BJP won the single seat that was up for polls while it upstaged the Congress and emerged as a powerful force in Telangana. This, even as the TRS now grabbed the seat held by the Congress in the 2018 December assembly polls. In Uttar Pradesh, the BJP won a seat and proved its continued supremacy over the SP. In Bihar, the Lalu Yadav enterprise RJD won a seat even as the BJP managed to take the second seat up for polls there. Curiously, in the first assembly by-poll after the dramatic shift in power in Maharashtra from the Shiv Sena to the party’s rebels and to the BJP, a by-poll in Mumbai city saw the parent Sena of Uddhav Thackeray winning the seat in what should come as a serious blow to the rebel faction led by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde. This has come as a huge morale boost to Thackeray as his party’s legitimacy after the split in the Sena has been proven or reasserted. Shinde and the BJP should be equally shocked by this verdict as it could also be interpreted as the people’s disapproval of the power games that the Sena rebels and the BJP jointly played in Maharashtra.
What also should not go unnoticed is that the Congress party could not make a mark in this round of by-polls and rather lost a seat in Telangana, even as Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra received good mass response across the southern states including Telangana. This has not translated into votes for the party even as it proved its democratic credentials yet again by holding a poll for the post of party chief at the national level. The impact of the Yatra might perhaps take time to visibly and positively result in electoral outcomes.