The BJP retained the Bageshwar Assembly bypoll seat in Uttarakhand on Friday, with its candidate Parwati Dass winning by a narrow margin of 2,405 votes. Dass is the wife of Chandan Ram Dass, whose death in April necessitated the bypoll. Dass had won Bageshwar for the fourth time in the 2022 Assembly elections by a huge margin. He was a minister with portfolios of Social Welfare, Minority Welfare, Road Transport, and Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises. This time, in an attempt to gain sympathy votes, the BJP fielded Dass’s wife Parwati. After the Congress’s 2022 candidate Ranjit Das left to join the BJP just weeks before the election, the party opted to field former AAP candidate Kumar. Ranjit, however, was not named as the BJP candidate. Follow our live blog for latest Bypoll Result 2023 updates! In another setback to the Congress, its INDIA ally Samajwadi Party (SP) fielded a candidate in Bageshwar. This is despite the fact that in the 2022 Assembly polls, the SP only won 0.68% of the votes in this seat and has no MLAs in the current Assembly. Its candidate for the bypoll, Bhagawati Prasad, got only 637 votes. Bageshwar, a Scheduled Caste seat in the Kumaon region, has been held by the BJP since 2007. The last time the Congress won here was in 2002. The constituency has 1.2 lakh voters across 188 polling booths. In the 2022 Assembly elections, the BJP had got 43.14% of the votes cast, compared to the Congress's share of 26.88%. The September 5 bypoll saw 55.44% polling.
