The Bhartiya Janta Party has managed to retain the Dhamnagar seat of Odisha. BJP's candidate Suryabanshi Suraj won the Dhamnagar byelection by a margin of 9881 votes after 19 rounds of counting. Suraj secured 80351 votes while Abanti Das of Biju Janta Dal got 70470 votes whereas independent candidate Rajendra Kumar Das came third with 8153 votes. Congress’ Baba Harekrushna Sethy could only manage 3561 votes to rank four in the table.
BJP grabbed 49.09 per cent votes whereas BJD got 43.05 per cent votes while Congress secured only 2.18 per cent votes. The Dhamnagar seat went vacant after the death of BJP MLA Bishnu Charan Sethi in September. BJP made his son Suryabanshi Suraj its candidate from the constituency which has certainly been fruitful for the saffron party.
Out of a total of 7 assembly constituencies where the bypolls were held on Thursday, the BJP has managed to secure 4 seats. Apart from the Dhamnagar seat, the party has emerged victorious from UP's Gola Gokrannath, Haryana's Adampur and Bihar's Gopalganj. RJD has won the Mokama seat in Bihar while Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) has claimed Andheri East. Counting is under progress in Telangana where BJP is trailing behind TRS by over 10000 votes after 14 rounds of counting.
This victory is surely going to boost the morale of the Bhartiya Janta Party for the upcoming elections of Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh the Delhi MCD. The polls would be different this time as the Aam Aadmi Party has made its way into the states directly challenging both BJP and Congress.
Himachal Pradesh will go to polls in a single phase on November 12 while voting will take place in two phases in Gujarat on December 1 and December 5. Counting of votes for both the states will be done on December 8.