Gold Silver Reports (GSR) – Kairana Bypoll: Counting Begins, Crucial Test for BJP & Opposition — The results of the by-election to the Kairana Lok Sabha seat, which went to polls on 28 May, will be declared on Thursday, 31 May. The seat fell vacant after the death of BJP MP Hukum Singh, whose daughter Mriganka Singh is now the party candidate.
She is fighting Rashtriya Lok Dal’s Tabassum Hasan, who also has the support of the Congress, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party.
✅ In Kairana, where it is a direct contest between a united opposition and the BJP, 384 faulty VVPATs were replaced. Both sides took their complaints of malfunctioning machines to the Election Commission, after which repolling was ordered.
✅ Tabassum Hasan, the opposition candidate belonging to the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) in Kairana, had even alleged that faulty machines in Muslim and Dalit-dominated areas – claimed to be opposition strongholds – had not been replaced. The allegations were rejected by the district magistrate.
✅ The Kairana by-election, a seat BJP won in 2014, is seen as a testing ground for opposition unity ahead of the 2019 elections in a state that sends the maximum number of lawmakers to parliament. After sworn rivals Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BJP) came together to win bypolls to the BJP bastions of Gorakhpur and Phulpur earlier this year, the Congress and RLD have joined the bandwagon in Kairana.
✅ Amid widespread failure of vote machines, opposition leaders like Akhilesh Yadav of SP and Praful Patel of the NCP, which has fielded its candidate in Bhandara-Gondiya, renewed their pitch for using ballot papers instead in the 2019 polls. The Election Commission, which has blamed the malfunction partly on the extreme heat, has ruled it out.
✅ Chief Election Commissioner OP Rawat told NDTV that the machines are new and had been deployed for the first time, and would stabilize by 2019. He also apportioned blame to the training of election staff to use the machines.
✅ Bypoll to Maharashtra’s Palghar Lok Sabha seat, which was held by the BJP, has further strained its ties with ally Shiv Sena after it fielded the late BJP lawmaker’s son. The only parliamentary seat in Nagaland, vacated by BJP ally who is now Chief Minister, also voted in Monday’s by-election.
✅ Polling was also held for 10 assembly seats in nine states, Noorpur (Uttar Pradesh), Jokihat (Bihar), Tharali (Uttarakhand), Gomia and Silli (Jharkhand), Maheshtala (West Bengal), Ampati (Meghalaya), Palus Kadegaon (Maharashtra), Shahkot (Punjab) and Chengannur (Kerala).
✅ In Bihar’s Jokihat, the bypoll is seen as a prestige battle for Chief Minister Nitish Kumar after the sitting JD(U) lawmaker quit the party and joined the RJD after Mr Kumar joined hands with the BJP last year.
✅ In Maheshtala, a seat held by the Trinamool, the bypoll result will be significant as the ruling party anticipates its vote share going down, though it seems confident of a win. The BJP expects to shore up its vote count in a state where it’s keen on getting a toehold ahead of 2019. Polling, which took place under the watch of paramilitary forces, was peaceful as opposed to violence during the panchayat elections a fortnight ago.
✅ It is a three-way contest in Kerala’s Chengannur, where the opposition Congress is keen on reclaiming ground it lost to the ruling CPM two years ago. After breaching the Left bastion in Tripura earlier this year, the BJP is hoping to do better than in 2016 when it won nearly 16 per cent votes in the assembly polls.
BJP Ahead of RLD in the First Round of Counting
Speaking to ANI, Indra Vijay Singh, collector of Shamli district in Kairana said, “First round of counting is completed and tabulation is underway. Congress candidate Tabassum Hasan has received 3,700 votes and BJP’s Mriganka Singh has received 3,746 votes.”
RLD’s Tabassum Hasan Takes the Lead
RLD’s Tabassum Hasan leading by over 3000 votes over BJP’s Mriganka Singh in Kairana.
Who Are the Candidates in the Fray?
The Kairana seat fell vacant after the death of BJP MP Hukum Singh, whose daughter Mriganka Singh is now the party candidate.
She is fighting Rashtriya Lok Dal’s Tabassum Hasan, who also has the support of the Congress, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party.
Just ahead of the polls, Lok Dal candidate Kanwar Hasan retired from the contest and joined the RLD, further boosting Tabassum’s chances.
Post Updated 10:07 AM
