New Delhi: New electoral experiments before the crucial 2019 general elections will be put to test on Wednesday when the Lok Sabha bypolls results of Gorakhpur, Phulpur in Uttar Pradesh and Araria in Bihar will be announced.
The by-elections are important because political parties, both ruling and opposition, have tried a new political experiment in these three bypolls.
The first, in Uttar Pradesh, arch rivals Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) have joined hands against Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Congress candidates.
Both the seats were won by the BJP in 2014 but Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath vacated Gorakhpur seat and deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya vacated the Phulpur seat.
Similarly in Bihar, the bypolls is a test for former deputy chief minister Tejaswi Yadav to lead the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) against Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar-led alliance, in the absence of RJD chief Lalu Prasad, who is currently in jail in the fodder scam case.
This is the first electoral contest between RJD and Kumar-led Janata Dal (United), which split ways from the Grand Alliance and joined hands with the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) last year.
The two experiments are expected to play a decisive role in the general elections as newer political realignments could happen around them.
Apart from these three seats, assembly bypoll results for two seats in Bihar—Bhabhua and Jehanabad—will also be announced on Wednesday. In Bihar, RJD and Congress are contesting these bypolls together.
All the seats had witnessed polling on Sunday.