UP, Rajasthan, Bihar Bye-Election Results 2024 Highlights: Adityanath hails BJP’s victory as party secures 6 seats in UP, 5 in Rajasthan, and triumphs all 4 in Bihar

Hailing his political experience, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav welcomed Satish Kumar to the party on Sunday as party's Vice-President in the state, news agency PTI reported.

"Satish Kumar ji was MLA for three times. He has a good political experience, he believes in social justice. In 1994, he did a big rally, which is discussed even now. His contribution is to take the society forward. He has joined the RJD, we welcome him. As per the instructions of Lalu Yadav, he has been made party's State Vice President, more responsibilities will be given to him, I believe he will fulfil them, and take the party forward," Yadav said. (PTI)

The BJP put up an impressive show in Rajasthan too on Saturday, winning five of the seven Assembly constituencies where bypolls were held.

The Congress, which had four of these seats, managed to win just Dausa while the Rashtriya Loktantrik Party (RLP) lost its lone seat of Khinwsar, also considered its home turf, for the first time since the seat’s first election in 2008. The Bharat Adivasi Party (BAP) retained Chorasi.

Although the main opposition, Congress finished third in four constituencies. The BJP, whose tally dropped from 24 to 14 in the Lok Sabha polls, seems to have gained from checking the rebellions, fighting a more spirited and well-oiled campaign than the Congress, and benefitting from being the ruling party. The Congress, which at one point seemed set to have a good show, lost momentum after the Haryana Assembly poll results and could not recover.

Here's what you need to know about Rajasthan Bye-election results.

As the BJP swept the Assembly bypolls in Bihar, winning all four seats, including the RJD bastions of Belaganj and Ramgarh, poll strategist Prashant Kishor’s Jan Suraaj Party (JSP) made its presence felt in its debut, potentially denting the prospects of the RJD in two seats despite its other two candidates forfeiting deposits.

In Belaganj, a seat which the RJD had not lost over the past 34 years, the JD(U)’s Manorama Devi defeated RJD’s Vishwanath Kumar Singh by 21,391 votes.

The JSP candidate Mohammad Amjad seemingly played spoilsport here for the RJD as he pocketed over 17,000 votes.

Here's the Political Pulse by Santosh Singh.

As the bypoll results on nine Assembly seats in the state are announced on Saturday, the Congress is preparing to launch an extensive outreach programme among Dalits, OBCs and minority communities and also undertake a revamp of its frontal organisations.

Having opted out of this bypoll and leaving it for the Samajwadi Party (SP) to contest, the Congress, whose leaders have been claiming that Dalit votes shifted to the INDIA alliance in Uttar Pradesh, has begun the exercise with appointment of the party’s MP from Barabanki and young Dalit face Tanuj Punia as the chairman of its SC wing.

While the Samajwadi Party has been claiming that it got support of Dalits along with backwards and minorities because of its call for “PDA” formula during Lok Sabha elections, both the Congress and the SP wanted to see whether the formula continues to work beyond Lok Sabha polls as well.

Here's what the Congress is planning to do in UP

Beyond the Maharashtra sweep, the other good news for the BJP on Saturday came from Uttar Pradesh. The Yogi Adityanath-led UP BJP not only won six of the seven bypolls it contested but also managed to wrest two Samajwadi Party (SP) seats that had elected non-BJP parties for almost three decades.

The results marked a setback for the SP that was on the upswing in Uttar Pradesh after the Lok Sabha polls in which it won the most seats. In the end, the BJP-led NDA won 7 of the nine seats where bypolls were held and the SP two.

The NDA’s wins are a big boost for Adityanath who directly took control of the bypoll campaign right from the start, attempting to correct the narrative about a BJP on the back foot after the Lok Sabha elections.

Read the full story here.

The results for bye-elections across nine seats in Uttar Pradesh, seven in Rajasthan, and four in Bihar came in on Saturday, following which UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath hailed Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the BJP’s victory in bye-elections as the party secured six seats, and its ally Rashtriya Lok Dal (RJD) won one seat, while the Samajwadi Party was able to win just two seats out of nine contested.

“The credit for this historic victory goes to the visionary leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. His exemplary leadership continues to steer the double-engine government toward ensuring security, good governance, and prosperity,” Adityanath said.

“This resounding mandate reflects people’s unwavering trust in PM Modi’s leadership. The public firmly believes that his policies and decisions are aligned with the best interests of the nation and society, and this belief has been reaffirmed through this election,” he said.

Read what UP CM Yogi Adityanath said here.

Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP)'s electoral slide continued in Uttar Pradesh, with the party failing to open its account in the bypolls.

BSP candidates were pushed to the third spot in seven seats, while in two seats, they finished a dismal fifth, below even Azad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram), and AIMIM candidates.

The party's poor show opened it to the charge of being a "vote katva" -- a term meant to accuse the BSP of cutting into votes of Samajwadi Party, especially in Katehari and Phulpur, in favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Accusing the BSP of reducing his party's votes in the bypolls, Samajwadi Party spokesperson Deepak Ranjan told PTI that the BSP has been acting as the "B-team of the BJP".

"The BSP fielded its candidates in the bypolls to benefit the BJP," he said.

The 7-2 result in the bypolls to nine assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh in favour of the BJP reasserted Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's political authority in the state's politics, especially after the recent reverses in Lok Sabha polls.

At the same time, the Congress not contesting and the BSP's yet another below-par show meant that despite losing ground, the Samajwadi Party continues to dominate the opposition space in the most populous state.

The results were immaterial from the issue of the UP BJP government's stability and yet much pride was at stake, especially for the ruling party as the bypolls were the first electoral test of the BJP-led-NDA and INDIA bloc after the 2024 Lok Sabha polls in which the opposition had limited the BJP to its worst show in UP since 2014.

The saffron party had won 33 seats, while the SP had emerged on top with 37 seats out of 80.

In each of the seven assembly seats that the BJP won on Saturday, all the winning candidates were unanimous that Adityanath and his call for unity were a "big factor" in their victory.

That's why even before the Election Commission officially confirmed the byelection results, a confident Adityanath arrived at the UP BJP office in Lucknow around 3.30 pm on Saturday to reiterate the importance of “ek hain toh safe hain" and "batenge toh katenge" (united we are safe, divided we perish)' – slogans that virtually became a call for Hindu unity to counter's the opposition's "caste politics" in the mini-polls.

The Rashtriya Lok Dal on Saturday described its candidate Mithilesh Pal's victory in the Meerapur assembly seat in Muzaffarnagar district as "historic" and "emphatic".

A party spokesperson also said that the victory assumes significance, as the people of Meerapur have once again reposed their faith in the party led by Jayant Chaudhary.

RLD chief and Union minister Jayant Chaudhary said in a post on X in Hindi: "My best wishes to the newly elected MLAs who won in the bye-elections in various states. In Uttar Pradesh, the NDA has performed very strongly by running a joint election campaign. Special thanks to the people of Meerapur!!" 

The ruling BJP won five of the seven seats in Rajasthan, wresting three from Congress and one from the RLP. The Bharat Adivasi Party (BAP) and the Congress retained one seat each.

For Chief Minister Bhajan Lal Sharma, these elections will be seen as a vote on his governance, even though BJP held only one of the seven seats earlier.

However, buoyed by Haryana results and no clarity within the INDIA alliance, the BJP had hoped to upset Congress’s plans in the state.

The ruling NDA in Bihar swept the bypolls to four assembly segments, retaining Imamganj (HAM) and wresting from the INDIA bloc Tarari (BJP), Ramgarh (BJP) and Belaganj (JD-U), receiving a boost ahead of the assembly elections due next year.

The assembly bypolls were held in nine seats in Uttar Pradesh, seven seats in Rajasthan, six seats in West Bengal, five seats in Assam, four seats each in Punjab and Bihar, three seats in Karnataka, two seats in Madhya Pradesh and Kerala, and one seat each in Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Uttarakhand and Meghalaya

Ruling parties held sway in most of the 13 states in the assembly byelection results declared on Saturday, with the BJP and its allies wresting seats in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan and the Trinamool Congress sweeping West Bengal.

Out of the 46 seats where byelections were held, the BJP and its allies won 26, a gain of nine seats, followed by Congress with seven -- a loss of six seats.

The Trinamool Congress won six, the Aam Aadmi Party three and the Samajwadi Party two seats. The LDF in Kerala and BAP in Rajasthan got one each.

Apart from this, two seats in Sikkim were won unopposed by Sikkim Krantikari Morcha (SKM) candidates.

In the bypolls to two Lok Sabha constituencies, Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi cruised to her maiden electoral victory from Wayanad Lok Sabha seat in Kerala with a margin of over 4.1 lakh votes against CPI(M)-led LDF's Sathyan Mokeri, but the party lost Nanded in Maharashtra to the BJP.

After the reverses in the Lok Sabha election, the ruling BJP-led alliance secured its hold over the crucial state of Uttar Pradesh with its candidates winning seven out of nine seats.

Uttar Pradesh BJP president Bhupendra Singh Chaudhary on Saturday hailed the party's decisive victory in the state assembly bypolls, attributing the success to the public's unwavering faith in the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.

Citing the BJP's victory in Kundarki seat of Moradabad district, Chaudhary said the results are also "a slap on the face of those who indulge in caste, region and religion-based politics".

"I respect the decision of the great people of Uttar Pradesh. They have expressed their trust in Modi ji, Yogi ji and the policies of the BJP, and showered us with affection and blessings. For this, I extend my heartfelt gratitude to them," he said.

Chaudhary noted the "overwhelming support" for the BJP's welfare-oriented approach and said "our policies aimed at public and poverty welfare will continue to progress with full strength".

-PTI

In Meerapur, RLD's Mithilesh Pal bagged 84,304 votes to defeat her nearest rival Sumbul Rana of the SP by 30,796 votes.

In the 2022 Assembly elections, the BJP won Phulpur, Ghaziabad, Majhawan and Khair, while the SP emerged victorious in Sishamau, Katehari, Karhal and Kundarki.

The RLD, which was an SP ally then, won the Meerapur seat.

The Congress stayed away from the bypolls this time after extending support to its INDIA bloc ally SP.

The BSP fielded candidates in all nine seats, while the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) put up nominees in Ghaziabad, Kundarki and Meerapur.

The Aazad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram) led by Chandrashekhar Aazad was also in the fray in all the seats barring Sishamau.

SP's Tej Pratap Yadav secured 1,04,304 votes to pip BJP's Anujesh Pratap Singh by 14,725 votes in Karhal.

The seat fell vacant after SP chief Akhilesh Yadav got elected to the Lok Sabha from Kannauj earlier this year.

Tej Pratap's party colleague Naseem Solanki defeated BJP's Suresh Awasthi by 8,564 votes in Sishamau where Bahujan Samaj Party's (BSP) Virendra Kumar finished a distant third with 1,410 votes.

The bypoll in Sishamau was necessitated after three-time sitting SP MLA Irfan Solanki, the husband of Naseem Solanki, was disqualified following his conviction in a criminal case.

In Phulpur, BJP's Deepak Patel bagged 78,289 votes to defeat his nearest rival and SP nominee Md Mujtaba Siddiqui by 11,305 votes.

In Ghaziabad, saffron party nominee Sanjeev Sharma polled 96,946 votes to trounce his nearest rival Singh Raj Jatav of the SP by 69,351 votes, while his party colleague Surender Diler emerged victorious in Khair, defeating SP's Charu Kain by 38,393 votes.

BJP's Suchismita Maurya, who bagged 77,737 votes, defeated her nearest rival Jyoti Bind of the SP by 4,922 votes in Majhawan, while Dharmraj Nishad of the BJP won the Katehari seat, beating SP's Shobhawati Varma by 34,514 votes.

In Kundarki, BJP's Ramveer SIngh made short work of Mohammad Rizwan of the SP, winning by 1,44,791 votes.

Months after the ruling BJP's poor Lok Sabha poll performance in Uttar Pradesh, the saffron party hit the opposition parties out of the park by winning six of the nine Assembly seats in the state where bypolls were held on November 20.

Adding to BJP's emphatic performance, its ally Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) clinched Meerapur, the lone seat it contested.

The Samajwadi Party (SP) emerged victorious on the remaining two seats -- Karhal and Sishamau.

According to the Election Commission (EC), the BJP candidates emerged victorious in Kundarki, Ghaziabad, Khair (SC), Phulpur, Katehari and Majhawan assembly constituencies.

Of the seven seats where the bypolls were held on November 13, the Congress held four and the BJP, the RLP and the BAP one each.

After winning the Chorasi seat, the BAP will now have four MLAs in the 200-member Rajasthan Assembly and the RLP will have none.

The 200-member Rajasthan Legislative Assembly now has 119 MLAs of the BJP, 66 of the Congress, four of the BAP, two of the BSP, one of the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) and eight independents.

-PTI

The BJP won five of the seven seats in the Rajasthan Assembly bypolls, the results of which were announced on Saturday.

Congress and Bharat Adivasi Party (BAP) bagged one seat each, according to the Election Commission (EC).

BJP's Rajendra Bhamboo won Jhunjhunu, Rajendra Gurjar won Deoli-Uniara, Rewant Ram Danga won Khinwsar, Shanta Amrit Lal Meena won Salumbar and Sukhavant Singh won Ramgarh.

BAP candidate Anil Kumar Katara won the Chorasi seat and Congress won Dausa.

The BJP fielded Cabinet minister Kirodi Lal Meena's brother Jag Mohan from Dausa seat. The defeat came as a blow to Meena and the ruling BJP.

- PTI

Rajendra Gurjar collected 1,00,599 votes in the bypolls for Rajasthan's Deoli-Uniara. He beat Independent Naresh Meena, who got 59,478 votes.

The Indian National Congress' Kastoor Chand Meena came third with 31,385 votes.

The seat comes under Tonk district. Senior Congress leader Sachin Pilot is an MLA from Tonk Assembly seat. Former DGP Harish Chandra Meena, considered close to Pilot, was elected from here in 2018 and 2023, before his election to the LS this year.

The winner this time, Rajendra Gurjar is a former MLA from 2013-18, who was defeated by Harish Meena in 2018.

Deen Dayal from the Indian National Congress won the bypoll to the Dausa
Assembly seat by netting 75,536 votes.
This was 2,300 more than the second-placed Jag Mohan of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

The region has been in the news for much heartache for the BJP. 
While it lost the Assembly seat in 2023, it also lost the Dausa Lok Sabha, prompting resignation of party heavyweight Kirodi Lal Meena as a minister in June. 

After the party lost Dausa LS and some other seats in eastern Rajasthan, Meena said that he could not fulfil the task given to him by Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself hence he has no right to continue as a minister.
However, over four months later, the BJP has not accepted his resignation and he remains locked in a skirmish with the government over various corruption issues.

Ramgarh saw BJP's Sukhavant Singh get 1,08,811 votes, defeating Congress' Aryaan Zubair by 13,636 votes.

Since 1990, the seat has shifted between the Khan family of Congress and Gyan Dev Ahuja of BJP. Congress leader Zubair Khan was first elected from here in 1990 and again in 1993, 2003 and 2023.

Ahuja won the seat in 1998, 2008, and 2013, but was dropped in 2018, allegedly owing to his differences with then CM Vasundhara Raje. The Congress also dropped Khan, and instead fielded his wife Shafia Zubair, who defeated Sukhwant Singh of BJP.

Rajendra Bhamboo won the Jhunjhunu bypoll in Rajasthan. He got 90,425 votes, which was 42,848 more than the second-place Amit Ola of the Indian National Congress.

A stronghold of the Ola family of Congress for the past 4 elections, the BJP last won Jhunjunu in 2003.

Bhamboo is a party rebel, who had come third after Ola and Bablu Choudhary in 2023 elections.

Tej Pratap Singh, the nephew of Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, has won from Karhal with a victory margin of 14,725. He bagged 1,04,304 votes in total.

BJP's Anujesh Pratap Singh came second with 89,579 votes in what's perhaps the most significant constituency.

The elections were necessitated after Akhilesh Yadav vacated the seat once he got elected to Lok Sabha from Kannauj.

The seat is seen as a SP stronghold - the party has wrested control in every election held here since 1993.

Mithlesh Pal from the Rashtriya Lok Dal has won the Meerapur seat, netting 84,304 votes. 
She defeated her closest rival, Sumbul Rana of the Samajwadi Party, by 30,796 votes.

The Meerapur Assembly seat had a RLD legislator, Chandan Chauhan, who vacated the seat after becoming a member of Parliament from Bijnor.

In 2022, Chauhan had defeated a BJP candidate to win Meerapur, located in the RLD’s stronghold of West UP.

BJP's Deepak Patel won Phulpur, bagging 78,289 votes. His closest competitor was SP's Mohd Mujtaba Siddiqui who got 66,984 votes.

The seat went to bypoll as BJP's Praveen Patel, who had won the seat in 2022, is now a Lok Sabha MP.

The seat had seen the thinnest of winning margins in 2022 with just 2,700 votes dividing the first and second place holders.

SP's Sishamau candidate Naseem Solanki got 69,714 votes, winning by a margin of 8,564 votes. BJP's Suresh Awasthi came second

Polling in Sisamau is being conducted due to Samajwadi Party’s (SP) MLA Irfan Solanki’s disqualification from the Assembly after his conviction in a criminal case.

Solanki was disqualified over his conviction in an arson and assault case. The BJP had finished in second place, over 12,000 votes behind Solanki.

According to the latest update, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has bagged the trio of Ghaziabad, Khair, and Phulpur assembly seats. Opposition Samajwadi Party has won Sishamau and Karhal in the Uttar Pradesh bypolls.

Deepak Patel, the BJP's Phulpur candidate defeated Samajwadi Party (SP) nominee Md Mujtaba Siddiqui by 11,305 votes. Patel got a total of 78,289 votes, the EC website showed.

The SP retained Sishamau and Karhal assembly seats, according to the EC.

-PTI

Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) and Samajwadi Party (SP) saw a tight race in Ghaziabad and Khair. BJP's Sanjeev Sharma defeated Samajwadi Party's Singh Raj Jatav by a margin of over 69,000 votes to win the Ghaziabad Assembly seat. In Khair, BJP's Surender Diler secured a little over 1 lakh votes to defeat SP's Charun Kain by a margin of over 38,000 votes.

After the ruling NDA alliance swept Bihar bypolls the JD(U) national spokesman Rajiv Ranjan Prasad said, "The people of Bihar deserve kudos for rejecting the negativity of the opposition and reposing their trust in Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. Under his leadership, the NDA will win more than 200 seats of the 243-strong assembly in 2025."

The RJD suffered an embarrassing defeat in Ramgarh, where Prashant Kishor's prediction of the party “finishing third or fourth” came true. The forecast had caused Sudhakar Singh, son of state RJD president Jagadanand Singh, the MP from Buxar who had won the assembly seat in 2020, to threaten that Jan Suraaj cadres in the constituency will be “beaten up with sticks”.

The ruling NDA in Bihar on Saturday swept the bypolls to four assembly segments, retaining Imamganj and wresting from the INDIA bloc Tarari, Ramgarh and Belaganj, receiving a boost ahead of the assembly elections due next year.

Candidates of the Jan Suraaj, floated recently by former political strategist Prashant Kishor with much fanfare, lost deposits in all but one seat, in a clear indication that the fledgling party, despite claims of taking the political landscape in the state by storm, needs to cover much ground.

The biggest setback for the INDIA bloc, helmed by the RJD, came in Belaganj, a seat the party had been winning since its inception in the 1990s, but this time lost to the JD(U) headed by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, the arch-rival of its founding president Lalu Prasad.
The JD(U) candidate Manorama Devi, a former MLC, defeated by a margin of more than 21,000 votes RJD's Vishwanath Kumar Singh who made his debut from a seat that fell vacant upon election to Lok Sabha of his father Surendra Prasad Yadav, a multiple term MLA.

The margin of victory was greater than the 17,285 votes polled by Mohd Amjad of Jan Suraaj, whom the RJD may have liked to blame for its defeat by causing a split in Muslim votes.From the Chorasi seat, Bharat Adivasi Party's  Anil Kumar Katara won by securing 21978 votes. With the last round of vote counting completed in Rajasthan Katara defeated Karilal from the BJP.

From the Chorasi seat, Bharat Adivasi Party's  Anil Kumar Katara won by securing 21978 votes. With the last round of vote counting completed in Rajasthan Katara defeated Karilal from the BJP.

The BJP was in the lead in Kundarki, Khair, Ghaziabad, Phulpur, Katehari and Majhawan seats, the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) in Meerapur and the Samajwadi Party (SP) in Karhal and Sisamau.

In Meerapur, the RLD's Mithilesh Pal is leading by 19,785 votes against Samajwadi Party candidate Sumbul Rana.

The BJP's Ramveer Singh is leading in Kundarki by a margin of 98,537 votes while his party colleague Sanjeev Sharma is leading by 59,707 votes in Ghaziabad. Surender Diler is leading by a margin of 35,702 votes in the Khair (SC) seat.

In Phulpur, the BJP's Deepak Patel is leading by a margin of 8,233 votes and in Majhawan, party candidate Shuchismita Maurya is leading by 4,033 votes. In Katehari the BJP's Dharam Raj Nishad is leading by 7,201 votes.

In Karhal, the Samajwadi Party's Tej Pratap Yadav is leading by a margin of 19,581 votes, while his party colleague Naseem Solanki is ahead of her nearest rival in Sishamau by a margin of 8,564 votes.

In the 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls, the BJP won Phulpur, Ghaziabad, Majhawan and Khair seats and the SP secured Sisamau, Katehari, Karhal and Kundarki.

The RLD, which was an SP ally then, won the Meerapur seat. The party has since switched sides and is now part of the BJP-led NDA.

With Vishal Prashant winning the Tarari constituency by a margin of over 10,000 votes, the ruling NDA alliance triumphs all four Assembly sets in Bihar. 

In an interesting turn of events on Rajasthan's Salumber seat, BJP Shanta Amrit Lal Meena defeated the BAP candidate Jitesh Kumar Katara by 1285 votes. Since the early trends trickled and till the last round Bharat Adivasi Party (BAP) was leading the Assembly seat but after the last round vote counting, BJP won the seat

Last round of vote counting begins in Rajasthan as INC candidate Deen Dayal from Dausa has won the seat by a margin of 2300 votes. This is supposed to be the only seat Congress has won this bye election. Deen Dayal defeated senior BJP leader Kirori Lal Meena's brother Jag Mohan Meena.

Jag Mohan’s late entry into active politics is explained by his long bureaucratic career. He started active campaigning for various BJP candidates in the 2018 polls and in subsequent elections. He had also been part of various protests and rallies held by the state BJP against the then ruling Congress during its 2018 – 2023 tenure on various issues such as paper leaks and the law and order situation.

Meanwhile, Congress candidate from Dausa Deen Dayal is leading against his nearest rival and BJP nominee Jag Mohan by a margin of 2,300 votes.

While Dayal polled 75,334 votes, Mohan, the brother of cabinet minister Kirodi Lal Meena, got 73,034, the EC website showed. Currently, the 200-seat Rajasthan Assembly has 114 MLAs of the BJP, 65 of the Congress, three of the Bharat Adivasi Party, two of the Bahujan Samaj Party, one of the Rashtriya Lok Dal and eight Independents.

The Samajwadi Party (SP) has won the Sisamau seat and maintained its lead in two others as counting got underway for the nine Uttar Pradesh assembly segments. Meanwhile the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was leading in five constituencies .

The ruling BJP aims to secure victories in bypolls to build momentum ahead of the 2027 Assembly election. Meanwhile, the SP seeks to strengthen the support it gained during Lok Sabha election earlier this year, where the INDIA bloc won a majority of the state’s 80 seats.

With the Congress opting out of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly bypolls and instead extending support to the SP, the spotlight is on the latter, which has made efforts to reconnect with Muslims in the runup to the polls. The SP had fielded only five Muslim candidates in the recent Lok Sabha election.This time, the SP contested all nine seats under its own symbol, while the BJP fielded candidates in eight constituencies, allotting Meerapur to its ally, the RLD.

Samajwadi Party candidate Naseem Solanki won the bypoll from the Sisamau seat, defeating her closest rival, BJP’s Suresh Awasthi, by a margin of 8,564 votes. Naseem, the wife of jailed former MLA Irfan Solanki, secured 69,714 votes. BSP’s Virendra Kumar claimed third place.

The BJP and its ally RLD were leading in six of the nine Uttar Pradesh Assembly seats where bypolls were held earlier this week while the Samajwadi Party was ahead in the remaining three, Election Commission trends showed on Saturday.

The BJP was in the lead in Kundarki, Khair, Ghaziabad, Phulpur and Majhawan seats, the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) in Meerapur and the Samajwadi Party (SP) in Karhal, Katehari and Sisamau.

In Meerapur, the RLD's Mithilesh Pal is leading by a margin of 18,281 votes against the Samajwadi Party candidate.

The BJP's Ramveer Singh is leading in Kundarki by a margin of 64,690 votes while his party colleague Sanjeev Sharma is leading by 38,007 votes in Ghaziabad. Surender Diler is leading by a margin of 19,884 votes in the Khair (SC) seat.

In Phulpur, the BJP's Deepak Patel is leading by a margin of 3,877 votes and in Majhawan party candidate Shuchismita Maurya is leading by a margin of 2,772 votes.

In Karhal, the Samajwadi Party's Tej Pratap Yadav is leading by a margin of 23,655 votes while his party colleague Naseem Solanki is ahead of her nearest rival in Sishamau by a margin of 14,536 votes.

The Samajwadi Party's Shobwati Verma is leading by a margin of 2929 votes in Katehari's seat.

In the current assembly, the BJP has 251 MLAs and the SP 105.

In Rajasthan, vote counting has hit its halfway mark as 13 f 20 rounds of vote counting were concluded with BJP retaining four — Jhunjhunu, Ramgarh, Deoli – Uniara and Khinwsar — from the seven seats headed for bypolls while Congress leads in Dausa and Bharat Adivasi Party leads in the remaining two, Salumber and Chorasi.

Amit Ola (Jhunjhunu, Congress)

Amit Ola is currently trailing behind BJP's Rajendra Bhabhoo by at least 37,000 votes in Jhunjhunu

Amit Ola, 48, is a third-generation politician from the Ola family. His grandfather Sis Ram Ola was a Congress veteran and a five-time Lok Sabha MP from Jhunjhunu and an eight-time MLA from various constituencies in Jhunjhunu district. Amit’s father Brijendra Ola won the Jhunjhunu Assembly seat for four consecutive terms between 2008 and 2023, before getting elected to the Lok Sabha earlier this year.

Aryaan Zubair (Ramgarh, Congress)

Aryaan Zubair is currently trailing behind BJP's Sukhavant Singh by a marginal vote gap of 2560 votes in Ramgar

With both his parents having been the MLAs, Aryaan Zubair, 27, seemed to be waiting to take a plunge into electoral politics for some time. Since 1990, the Ramgarh Assembly seat has been held by either the Khan family of the Congress or the BJP’s Gyan Dev Ahuja. Aryaan’s father Zubair Khan was first elected from here in 1990 and again in 1993, 2003 and 2023, while Ahuja won the seat in 1998, 2008, and 2013.

Jag Mohan Meena (Dausa, BJP)

BJP's Jag Mohan Meena is currently trailing behind Congress's Deen Dayal by at least 11,000 votes in Dausa.

The brother of senior BJP leader and minister Kirodi Lal Meena, Jag Mohan Meena, 67, is a retired Rajasthan Administrative Service (RAS) officer. He is the BJP’s candidate in the Dausa Assembly seat. Jag Mohan’s late entry into active politics is explained by his long bureaucratic career. He started active campaigning for various BJP candidates in the 2018 polls and in subsequent elections. He had also been part of various protests and rallies held by the state BJP against the then ruling Congress during its 2018 – 2023 tenure on various issues such as paper leaks and the law and order situation.

Kanika Beniwal (Khinvsar, RLP)

Kanika Beniwal is currently trailing behind BJP's Rewant Ram Danga by at least 6000 votes in Khinwsar.

The wife of Rashtriya Loktantrik Party (RLP) chief Hanuman Beniwal, Kanika Beniwal, 37, is contesting in the bypoll as a party candidate from Khinvsar, the seat held by the Beniwal family since its creation. Hanuman was elected first from the seat in 2008 on the BJP ticket, in 2013 as an Independent, and then in 2018 as a candidate of his own party RLP. In 2019, Hanuman was elected from the Nagaur Lok Sabha constituency, when he was an ally of the BJP, and then his brother Narayan Beniwal clinched the Khinvsar Assembly bypoll.

8 of 11 rounds of vote counting have concluded in Bihar with the ruling NDA alliance leading in three of the four Assembly seats headed for bypolls. Meanwhile, 17 of 22 rounds have been completed in Rajasthan with BJP to likely retain four of the seven seats, and in the largest chunk of bypolls, 10 of 32 rounds have been concluded in Uttar Pradesh with BJP leading in six of the nine seats and SP leading in two. 

The early trends from Assembly bypolls in Rajasthan indicate a setback for veteran politicians Hanuman Beniwal, who is the chief of Rashtriya Loktantrik Party (RLP), Kirodi Lal Meena of BJP, as well as Ola (Jhunjhunu) and Khan (Ramgarh) families of Congress.

Hanuman Beniwal had fielded his wife Kanika Beniwal from the home turf for Khinwsar. However, with one-fourth of counting done, she was trailing BJP’s Rewant Ram Danga by 5,000 votes.

For cabinet minister Kirodi Lal, who has been a constant headache to the Bhajan Lal Sharma government and the party, much is on the line after the party fielded his brother Jagmohan from Dausa. However, Congress’s Deen Dayal had a small lead of 1660 votes after the 5/18 rounds of counting.

Going into the polls, Congress party leaders were considering Jhunjhunu and Ramgarh as their strong seats. In Jhunjhunu, Congress candidate Amit Ola’s father Brijendra Ola won the Assembly seat for four consecutive terms between 2008 and 2023, before getting elected to the Lok Sabha earlier this year; Amit Ola is currently in third position.

In Ramgarh, the Congress was hoping to gain from sympathy votes following the demise of sitting MLA Zubair Khan – who held the seat for four terms, while his wife was MLA for one. However, their son Aryaan Zubair is trailing BJP’s Sukhavant Singh by just over 1100 votes after 5/22 rounds of counting.

While all eyes are on political strategist Prashant Kishor’s newly launched Jan Suraaj Party in Bihar the candidates however, witness a prominent vote gap as JSP' Kiran Singh trails by 44801 votes in Tarari, Sushil Kumar Singh trails in Ramgarh by 37687 votes, Jitendra Paswan trails by 12621 votes in Imamganj and Mohammad Amajad trails by 31754 votes in Belaganj.

The ruling NDA alliance in Bihar secured early leads in three of the four assembly constituencies. NDA candidates were leading in Tarari, Belaganj and Imamganj constituencies, while the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) was ahead in Ramgarh, according to initial trends of counting for the bypolls to the four assembly segments.

According to the Election Commission of India (ECI) website, Vishal Prashant of the BJP was leading in Tarari by 2,636 votes over his nearest rival Raju Yadav of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation after the completion of the second round of counting.

In the Imamganj constituency, Deepa Kumari of the Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular), an alliance partner of the NDA, was leading by 1,553 votes over her nearest rival Raushan Kumar of the RJD after the sixth round of counting.

Initially, Kumari, the daughter-in-law of Union Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, was trailing.

Manjhi, who previously represented the Imamganj seat, vacated it following his election to Lok Sabha from Gaya in the 2024 parliamentary elections.

In the Belaganj assembly seat, Manorma Devi of JD(U), which is also an alliance partner of the NDA, was leading by 7,928 votes over her nearest rival Vishwanath Kumar Singh of the RJD after completion of four rounds of counting.

Satish Kumar Singh Yadav of the BSP was leading by 3,033 votes in Ramgarh over his nearest rival Ashok Kumar Singh of the BJP after four rounds of counting.

Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular)'s Deepa Kumari leads against Rashtriya Janata Dal's Raushan Kumar with a margin of at least 3800 votes in Bihar's Imamganj

Katehari and Kundarki
In the Kundarki and Katehari Assembly seats, the SP’s Zia Ur Rehman and Lalji Verma, respectively, had won in 2022. While Rehman vacated the seat after winning the Sambhal Lok Sabha seats, Verma won the Ambedkar Nagar Lok Sabha seat. The BJP and its ally the NISHAD Party were the runners-up in these seats.

Ghaziabad - Khair
The BJP’s Atul Garg and Anoop Pradhan had won the Ghaziabad and SC-reserved Khair Assembly seats in 2022. Garg was later elected from the Ghaziabad Lok Sabha seat and the Pradhan from Hathras, leaving the two seats vacant.

Majhawan
The Majhawan Assembly seat was won by the NISHAD Party and RLD, both now BJP allies, in the 2022 polls, respectively. Vinod Kumar Bind vacated Majhawan after winning the Bhadohi Lok Sabha seat.

Phulpur
Among the UP seats, the narrowest winning margin in 2022 was in Phulpur, where the BJP’s Praveen Patel defeated the SP candidate by just over 2,700. Patel is now the Lok Sabha MP from Phulpur. The SP, despite its defeats, is known to have a strong presence in this area.

6 of 18 rounds of vote counting have been concluded in Rajasthan, while 6 rounds of 32 have been completed in Uttar Pradesh. Meanwhile, Bihar has completed 4 of 11 rounds of vote counting. 

In Rajasthan, the Dausa seat has drawn keen interest, as Cabinet Minister Kirodi Lal Meena's brother, Jagmohan Meena trails behind Congress candidate Deen Dayal by at least 22,000 votes.

Rajasthan's Dausa (Congress leads)

BJP's Jag Mohan trails in Dausa while Deen Dayal leads with at least 21,000 votes.

The Dausa region has been in the news for much heartache for the BJP of late. While it lost the Assembly seat in 2023, it also lost the Dausa Lok Sabha, prompting resignation of party heavyweight Kirodi Lal Meena as a minister in June.

After the party lost Dausa LS and some other seats in eastern Rajasthan, Meena said that he could not fulfil the task given to him by Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself hence he has no right to continue as a minister. However, over four months later, the BJP has not accepted his resignation and he remains locked in a skirmish with the government over various corruption issues.

Uttar Pradesh (BJP leads in 4 seats)

Dharamraj Nishad leads in Katehari, Sanjeev Sharma leads in Ghaziabad, Shuchismita Maurya leads in Majhawan, Surender Diler leads in Khair, Deepak Patel Phulpur, and Ramveer Singh leads in Kundarki.

Bihar

A tight race is being witnessed in Bihar as four Assembly seats headed for bypolls show BJP's Vishal Prashant leading in Tarari, BSP's Satish Kumar Singh Yadav leading in Ramgarh, RJD's Raushan Kumar leading in Imamganj and JD(U)'s Manorama Devi leading Belaganj. 

Karhal is the most significant of the nine constituencies as it was vacated by SP chief Akhilesh Yadav. His nephew Tej Pratap is contesting here. Meanwhile, SP has lodged complaints alleging that its supporters have been stopped from voting in some places. In the 2022 Assembly polls, Akhilesh had won Karhal ahead of the BJP runner-up. The seat is considered an SP stronghold with the party having won it in consecutive polls since 1993.

UP has the largest chunk of seats across 10 states and with two rounds of vote counting complete BJP's Dharamraj Nishad leads in Katehari, Samajwadi Party's Tej Pratap Singh leads in Karhal, Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) leads Mithlesh Pal Meerapur, BJP's Sanjeev Sharma leads in Ghaziabad, BJP's Shuchismita Maurya leads in Majhawan, SP's Naseem Solanki leads in Sisamau, BJP's Surender Diler leads in Khair, BJP's Deepak Patel Phulpur, and BJP's Ramveer Singh leads in Kundarki .

Four Assembly seats in Bihar headed for bypolls show BJP's Vishal Prashant leading in Tarari, BSP's Satish Kumar Singh Yadav leading in Ramgarh, RJD's Raushan Kumar leading in Imamganj and JD(U)'s Manorama Devi leading Belaganj.

Khinwsar - BJP

Chorasi - Bharat Adavasi Party (BAP) 

Jhunjhunu - Independent

Dausa - Congress

Deoli – Uniara - BJP

Ramgarh - Congress

Salumber - Bharat Adavasi Party (BAP) 

With the first round of voting complete BJP is leading in three seats in Rajasthan, while BJP and SP are tied in Uttar Pradesh.

In the early trends, BSP candidate Satish Yadav has taken an early lead over BJP's Ashok Singh in Ramgarh, according to preliminary reports. Meanwhile, in Tarari, BJP's Vishal Prashant is marginally ahead of CPI-ML's Raju Yadav. The bypolls, which are crucial for the political landscape in Bihar, feature a total of 38 candidates contesting across four key constituencies: Belaganj, Imamganj, Ramgarh, and Tarari.

Meanwhile, early trends are in and the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is leading in both Maharashtra and Jharkhand. While the NDA is looking to retain Maharashtra and wrest power in Jharkhand, the INDIA bloc will aim at pulling off an upset by defeating the Mahayuti alliance in Maharashtra, while securing a victory for Hemant Soren in Jharkhand.

EVM counting has begun across states as postal ballots concluded