Bypolls in eight states

THE biggest takeaways from the bypolls scattered over diverse locations — Kashmir to Kerala and Jharkhand to Assam — was the Aam Aadmi Party’s crushing defeat in Delhi, the BJP holding firm and even expanding its footprint and the question marks over the Election Commission’s conduct of polls in Srinagar and RK Nagar (Tamil Nadu). The AAP top brass may be deluding itself when it said the loss was due to the resignation of Jarnail Singh to contest against the grand old man of Punjab politics, Parkash Singh Badal. The AAP has to realise the verdict reflects the loss of moral lustre during its brief spell in power.  The party can claim the law has been vindictively applied against a dozen MLAs but what about the dismissal of three ministers for corruption and moral turpitude or designating 21 MLAs as Chief Parliamentary Secretaries? 

Even if Jarnail’s shifting led to the loss, there should be a shuffling of AAP’s top deck. After all, it was the AAP think tank that opted to get him to contest from Punjab. Its performance bodes poorly for the municipal polls in Delhi just 10 days away while the Congress would consider itself as the dark horse. In Karnataka, the Congress retained both seats despite the BJP’s success in poaching SM Krishna and Srinivas Prasad to its corner. The Congress also threw everything in the battle, knowing that the bells will toll for the Chief Minister if the seats are lost. The BJP held on to the seat in Rajasthan while in West Bengal, it has replaced the CPI as the runner-up to the Trinamool Congress.

In Himachal Pradesh that goes to the polls later this year, the BJP retained the seat with a slightly reduced margin. Fortunes have swung wildly here — the BJP won all the four Lok Sabha seats but the Congress recovered to win the municipal and panchayat polls.  Since then, the ageing Himachal Pradesh Congress Chief Minister, Virbhadra Singh’s troubles with tax and revenue agencies have deepened. In all the BJP has held firm but the Opposition is yet to mount a serious challenge to its emerging pre-eminence.