Bypoll Results - Modi wave comes to halt?

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party suffered an unexpectedly sharp jolt in by-elections in eight states, losing seats it held in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat and prompting the Opposition to declare that public opinion had turned against the Narendra Modi government since it came to power at the end of May with a thumping majority . Apart from three Lok Sabha seats, which were decided as expected, polls were held for 33 assembly seats, with BJP losing 13 of the 23 it held. Counting in one assembly seat in Chhattisgarh will be held later.

·        The biggest reversal for BJP came in politically crucial Uttar Pradesh, where Samajwadi Party won eight of 11 assembly seats.

·        In Rajasthan, Congress won three out of four.

·        Congress wresting three of the seats held by BJP MLAs in Gujarat seemed to underscore the sudden indifference of voters toward the party in Modi's home state as well.

·        Congress won three of the nine seats in Gujarat, which was an unexpected showing by a party believed to have been in terminal decline in the state.

·        The silver lining for BJP came from West Bengal, with an assembly seat victory. BJP re-entered the West Bengal assembly after 15 years, and for the first time on its own, breaking the state's decades old political polarization. Shamik Bhattacharya won from Basirhat South by a margin of 1,586 votes. The last time the saffron party had booked a seat in the House was in 1999, when Badal Bhattacharya won a bypoll from Ashoknagar as a BJP-Trinamool candidate.

Political commentators such as Gandhian Chunnibhai Vaidya of Ahmedabad said, however, that the Modi wave had ebbed. He said that, people vote whimsically. They did for Modi in a wave, now the wave is receding. But that is no reason to cheer. Work needs to be done in creating an aware electorate all over who would vote consciously and not on waves.

The three Lok Sabha seats were won on expected lines by party nominees. Modi’s Vadodara seat was retained by BJP’s city deputy mayor Ranjanben Bhatt, while Mulayam Singh’s grand nephew won the family pocket borough of Mainpuri that had been vacated by the Samajwadi Party leader to retain Azamgarh. Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao’s seat was won by the candidate of his Telangana Rashtra Samiti party.