New Delhi: BJP president Nitin Nabin on Monday accepted the people’s mandate in three assembly bypolls, saying the party will conduct a “thorough introspection” of the election results in Bankipur and Datia seats in Bihar and Madhya Pradesh respectively and work tirelessly to further strengthen their trust with renewed energy.
This came after the BJP faced embarrassing defeats in assembly bypolls in Bankipur of Bihar, where Jan Suraaj Party founder Prashant Kishor wrested the seat vacated by the ruling party chief Nitin Nabin. The saffron party also suffered defeat in Madhya Pradesh’s Datia assembly seat.
In Gujarat, the BJP retained the Manjalpur assembly seat in Vadodara district, with its candidate Satish Govindbhai Patel defeating his Congress challenger and former minister Bhikhabhai Rabari by 30,630 votes.
“In Bankipur and Datia, we did not receive the expected mandate. We will conduct a thorough introspection of the election results in both these areas with complete seriousness, and with renewed energy and determination, continue to work among the people to strengthen their trust,” Nabin said.
However, he acknowledged that the party had fallen short in Bihar’s Bankipur and Madhya Pradesh’s Datia.
The bypoll results delivered a mixed verdict for the BJP.
The party suffered its biggest setback in Bankipur, where Jan Suraaj founder Prashant Kishor registered the first electoral victory of his political career by defeating the BJP in a constituency the party had held continuously since 1995. The seat had been vacated after Nitin Nabin was elected to the Rajya Sabha.
In Datia, the Congress retained the seat, defeating the BJP by more than 6,000 votes.
The BJP’s only success came in Manjalpur in Gujarat’s Vadodara district, where Satish Patel retained the constituency for the party by defeating the Congress candidate by 30,630 votes. However, the victory margin was significantly lower than the BJP’s more than one lakh-vote landslide in the 2022 Assembly election.
The bypolls were closely watched as the first electoral test in these constituencies following recent political developments, with the Bankipur result drawing particular attention after Prashant Kishor’s breakthrough victory in one of the BJP’s longest-held urban bastions.
