Mid-way, UPA gets bypoll boost

TRS chief K Chandrashekhar Rao may have emerged as the biggest individual victor and former prime minister HD Deve Gowda the most prominent loser of the spate of byelections...

TRS chief K Chandrashekhar Rao may have emerged as the biggest individual victor and former prime minister HD Deve Gowda the most prominent loser of the spate of byelections 8212; for two Lok Sabha and 11 Assembly seats 8212; held across the country on December 5, results of which were declared today. But overall, it was good news for the Congress party, which won five Assembly seats and wrested the Bobilli Lok Sabha constituency from the Telugu Desam. For the UPA, as a whole, the bypoll results came as a reassuring mid-term gift with the combine winning a total of eight seats, leaving the NDA with just two and one going to an Independent.

For K Chandrashekhar Rao, the poll results of Karimnagar amply vindicated his decision to walk out of the UPA in protest against the ruling coalition8217;s refusal to seriously take up the issue of a separate Telengana state. Victory was particularly sweet because it was the local Congress leaders who had goaded the TRS chief to resign his Lok Sabha seat and go in for a fresh mandate in order to prove the popularity of his separate state demand. By winning Karimnagar by a margin of nearly two lakh votes, the TRS has acquired the necessary ballast to continue its campaign for Telengana.

But, sources said, it did not mean that the TRS would necessarily join the NDA, despite the BJP8217;s support for Telengana. The victory might make the Congress rethink its stance on the issue and a rapprochement between the TRS and the UPA is still in the realm of possibility.

In contrast to the beaming TRS chief, Janata Dal Secular president HD Deve Gowda was a broken and bitter man today with his bete noire Siddaramiah winning the prestigious Chamundeshwari bypoll by a slender margin of 257 votes. Deve Gowda camped in Chamundeshwari for the last several weeks to ensure the victory of the joint JDS-BJP candidate Shiva Basappa. His defeat not only spells a setback for the HD Kumaraswamy-led ruling coalition in Karnataka but will also provide a fillip to dissidents within the JDS 8212; led by veteran socialist Surendra Mohan and JDS parliamentary party leader MP Veerendra Kumar 8212; who have called for the expulsion of Deve Gowda on the grounds that he has betrayed the party8217;s ideology by joining hands with the BJP.

For the Congress, the defeat in Karimnagar was offset by the victory in Bobilli where its candidate B Jhansi Rani won by a small margin, adding one more Lok Sabha seat to the Congress kitty.

But more than Bobilli, it was the Congress8217;s success in Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Karnataka that lifted the mood of despondency that had gripped the party of late. In Maharashtra, the decision to take Narayan Rane on board once again paid off at the hustings with the candidates in Chimur and Daryapur 8212; both former Shiv Sena MLAs who had joined the Congress along with their mentor 8212; winning comfortably.

The victories were particularly significant because the Chimur seat in east Vidarbha lies close to Khairlanji, which was the epicenter of the Dalit outrage that erupted across the state recently while the Daryapur seat lies in western Vidarbha, the very heart of agrarian distress that has resulted in hundreds of farmers8217; suicides. That the Congress could win both seats not only shows the inability of the BJP-Shiv Sena to mount a challenge to the ruling party but also underlies that Narayan Rane8217;s influence has now grown beyond his native Konkan and reached as far as Vidarbha.

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Congress candidate Punjilal Parmar managed to win the Dungarpur seat in Rajasthan by nearly 10,000 votes. The victory was seen as significant because Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje and several of her Cabinet colleagues had campaigned extensively to retain the seat but failed to do so. As for the Chamundeshwari victory in Karnataka, it vindicated the Congress leadership8217;s decision to welcome Siddaramaiah into the party fold to checkmate erstwhile ally JDS. Like Narayan Rane, Siddaramiah too has shown that 8220;outsiders8221; can deliver when called upon to do so.

Another handsome win for the Congress came in Chhattisgarh where former CM Ajit Jogi8217;s wife, Renu Jogi, won the Kota seat by around 21,000 votes. Jogi supporters were exultant in Delhi today, pointing out that the Congress had won the seat by just a couple of thousand votes earlier and that despite belonging to the Scheduled Tribes, Renu Jogi had won a general seat.

The CPIM retained both the Thiruvambadi seat in Kerala and Islampur in West Bengal. But in Thiruvambadi, its candidate George M Thomas defeated his IUML rival by merely 246 votes compared to the 5000-odd margin that the CPIM had maintained in 2004.

Thanks to the return of Purno Sangma, the NCP could also add one seat to their tally. Desang M Sangma won the Rongjeng Assembly seat in the Garo Hills. The seat in Arunachal Pradesh, however, was won by an Independent.

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The NDA managed to win just two seats 8212; the BJP8217;s Devendra Verma defeated his Congress rival by around 11,000 in Pandhana seat of Madhya Pradesh while JDU candidate Vishwanath Singh defeated Hamid Mobarak Cong in Manihari in north Bihar by 2762 votes. But it could draw satisfaction from the fact that the Manihari seat had been won by the Congress8217;s Mobarak Hussain in the last elections 8212; a feat his son failed to match this time.

The victories, however, come as a shot in the arm for Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Nitish Kumar, both of whom have managed to win byelections since assuming power in their respective states.