New Delhi: With the Election Commission (EC) on Thursday announcing dates for byelections to four Lok Sabha constituencies, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is gearing up to reverse its poor showing in recent bypolls.
Three of the constituencies announced on Thursday were won by the BJP in the 2014 polls -- Kairana in Uttar Pradesh and Bhandara-Gondiya and Palgarh in Maharashtra. The Nagaland Lok Sabha seat is the fourth.
Byelections will also be held in 10 assembly seats across nine states. Polling for all the seats will take place on 28 May and counting on 31 May.
The byelections are important for the BJP because of the losses it suffered in recent bypolls, the defeats in Gorakhpur and Phulpur in BJP-ruled UP being particularly embarrassing. Its numbers in the Lok Sabha have come down to 274 from the 282 it had after the 2014 general elections.
“The elections are important for BJP because the party had performed well in the entire western Uttar Pradesh both in the 2014 and 2017 assembly polls. The momentum will be in favour of BJP because after the death of sitting MP Hukum Singh, people would be sympathetic towards BJP. The party has also tried to prepare against a joint opposition of Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP),” said a senior BJP leader based in Lucknow.
The elections in Kairana are expected to be particularly interesting as the BJP is up against the combined force of SP, BSP and Rashtriya Lok Dal. In the general elections, the BJP had managed to get 565,000 votes while the combined vote share of opposition parties was 532,000.
“The Kairana polls are important for two reasons—first, farmers, especially sugarcane farmers, are annoyed because their dues have not been cleared; and second, it will be interesting to see if the Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013 will still be an issue between the two largest communities in the region,” said Sudhir Panwar, a senior SP leader.