The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has wrested from the Congress both Sonkutch (Scheduled Caste) and Kukshi (Scheduled Tribe) Assembly seats in Madhya Pradesh with a convincing margin.
After the announcement of the byelection results on Thursday, chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said the BJP’s victory should be viewed as people’s verdict in support of the policies and programmes of the state BJP government. State BJP unit president Prabhat Jha said his party won both these elections due to Mr Chouhan’s leadership and party workers’ hard work.
Reacting to the election results, state Congress chief Suresh Pachouri said that the state BJP government used every method to tilt the result in Kukshi and Sonkutch in its favour. Targeting the state government and the ruling party, he said there was blatant use of muscle power, money power and the official machinery in these elections. He said that the Congress accepts the verdict and would now engage itself in analysing the poll outcome.
BJP candidate Rajendra Phulchand Verma has been declared elected in Sonkutch. He defeated his nearest rival Arjun Verma of the Congress with a margin of 19,457 votes. While the winning candidate polled 74,035 votes, the Congress candidate received 54,899 votes.
BJP’s Mukam Singh Kirade has won the Kukshi seat by a margin of 16,016 votes. He secured 6,02,954 votes, while his closest rival Nisha Singhar of the Congress polled 44,178 votes.
Ms Singhar is the niece of the late Leader of the Opposition Jamuna Devi, on whose demise this seat fell vacant. In both these byelections, all other candidates have lost their deposit.