Bypoll results leave BJP shocked

NCP workers celebrate their party's success in Bhandara-Gondiya Loksabha by-elections, outside their party office, on Thursday. Pic/PTI

Ahead of next year's general elections, a united Opposition got a major boost on Thursday when it delivered a huge blow to the BJP, defeating it in the Kairana Lok Sabha by-election in Uttar Pradesh and Bhandara-Gondiya in Maharashtra, while the saffron party managed to retain the Palghar parliamentary seat and win only one out of the 10 assembly seats in 10 states.

Out of the four Lok Sabha constituencies that voted on May 24, the Nagaland constituency returned the candidate of the ruling Nagaland Democratic Progressive Party, a BJP ally, who defeated the Naga People's Front candidate. The biggest shock for the BJP came from Kairana - a seat the BJP won in 2014 - where the Opposition had put up a common candidate.

Ajit Singh's RLDcandidate Tabassum Hasan, supported by the Congress, SP and BSP, trounced the BJP's Mriganka Singh in Kairana in UP by over 55,000 votes. The BJP along with its allies had swept 73 out of the 80 LS seats in UP in the 2014 general elections and won 312 seats out of a total 423 in the state assembly polls.