NEW DELHI, June 23:
AAP’s Gopal Italia today won from Gujarat’s Visavadar Assembly constituency and his party also retained Punjab’s Ludhiana West seat while the Congress-led UDF wrested Nilambur from the ruling LDF in Kerala, according to results of Assembly bypolls in four States.
The ruling BJP in Gujarat retained the Kadi seat, while the Trinamool Congress maintained its hold on the Kaliganj Assembly seat in West Bengal’s Nadia district.
The bypolls in the five constituencies were held on June 19.
Italia, the former president of the Gujarat unit of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), defeated his nearest rival, BJP candidate Kirit Patel, in Visavadar seat of Junagadh district by a margin of 17,554 votes, according to data shared by the Election Commission.
Despite its near-total dominance in the state, the BJP has not won the Visavadar seat since 2007. The seat fell vacant in December 2023 after the then AAP legislator Bhupendra Bhayani resigned and joined the ruling BJP.
Punjab’s ruling AAP retained the Ludhiana West Assembly seat with its candidate Sanjeev Arora defeating his nearest rival and Congress candidate Bharat Bhushan Ashu by a margin of 10,637 votes.
Arora secured 35,179 votes while Ashu got 24,542 votes, according to the Election Commission data. BJP’s Jiwan Gupta polled 20,323 votes while the Shiromani Akali Dal’s nominee Parupkar Singh Ghuman got 8,203 votes.
The byelection was necessitated following the death of AAP MLA Gurpreet Bassi Gogi in January.
Thanking the voters for the wins, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief Arvind Kejriwal called the bypolls a “semi-final to 2027” and a clear sign that voters would reject both the BJP and the Congress.(PTI)
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