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Congress bags 5 Assembly seats

Special Correspondent

Wrests Bobbili Lok Sabha seat in Andhra Pradesh from TDP

NEW DELHI: The Congress has won five out of a total of 11 Assembly seats and one of the two Lok Sabha constituencies in the byelections held on December 4.

It bagged the Bobbili Lok Sabha seat in Andhra Pradesh, wresting it from the Telugu Desam Party. Though party candidate B. Jhansi Lakshmi won by a narrow margin, it was a cause for celebration as the defeated TDP candidate, K. Appalanaidu, was the son of the deceased TDP MP K. Pyditallinaidu. This has brought down the TDP strength in the Lok Sabha from five to to four.

In the Karimnagar Lok Sabha seat in the State, the Congress had to eat humble pie with Telangana Rashtra Samiti chief K. Chandra Sekhar Rao winning the seat by over two lakh votes. Mr. Rao resigned from the Manmohan Singh Cabinet in protest against the lack of concrete steps towards creating a separate Telengana.

During the campaign, Mr. Rao said the election was a referendum on Telengana. However, the Congress on Thursday said the issue would have to be decided by the entire State and not by one Lok Sabha constituency.

In Kerala and West Bengal, where the Congress was at loggerheads with its supporting party, it lost to the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which retained both the Assembly seats.

The CPI(M) won the Thiruvambadi Assembly seat in Kerala by a thin margin of 246 votes and the Islampur Assembly segment in West Bengal by a margin of over 5,000 votes where it defeated its nearest rival, the Trinamool Congress. In Bengal, the Congress came a poor third.

The big Assembly battle was in Chamundeshwari, Karnataka, where Siddaramaiah, the Congress candidate, who quit the Janata Dal (Secular) and resigned his seat, scraped through by a narrow margin.

In Maharashtra, the Congress, perhaps, surprised itself by winning both the Assembly seats — Chimur and Dariyapur — despite the recent Dalit protests and the farmers' suicides in Vidarbha.

In Bihar, the Janata Dal (United) wrested the Manihara Assembly seat from the Congress. A notable win for the Congress came from Chhattisgarh's Kota seat, where the former Chief Minister, Ajit Jogi's wife Renu defeated her BJP rival.

The Congress retained the Dungarpur seat in Rajasthan, while the BJP retained the Pandhana segment in Madhya Pradesh. In the Roing Assembly segment in Arunachal Pradesh, a rebel Congressmen defeated the official candidate.

In Rongjeng (Meghalaya), the Nationalist Congress Party, also a UPA partner, won the seat comfortably with over 4,000 votes.

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