MP By-polls: BJP Wins 19 Out Of 28 Seats, Congress Nine, Scindia Safe

BHOPAL: The ruling BJP in Madhya Pradesh won 19 out of the 28 assembly constituencies, where by polls were held on November 3, giving it a comfortable majority in the House and providing stability to its eight-month-old government in the state.

"The victory of BJP in these by-polls will certainly strengthen Scindia's position in the BJP at the Centre," a political expert said.

The opposition Congress clinched nine seats. With this, the BJP now has 126 MLAs in the 230-member House, while the Congress has 96 legislators.

Due to the resignation of one more Congress MLA recently, the effective strength of the House is 229 at present.

The comfortable victory of the BJP, which needed only eight seats to have a full majority on its own in the 229- member House, will not only provide stability to the party-led government in the state, but also further cement the position of senior leader Jyotiraditya Scindia, who quit the Congress earlier this year and joined the saffron party.

In March this year, 22 Congress MLAs, mostly loyalists of Scindia, had resigned from the party and their Madhya Pradesh Assembly membership.This led to the collapse of the Kamal Nath-led state government and cleared the way for the BJP to again come to power.

Scindia and his loyalists had joined the BJP, with many of them becoming ministers in the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government.

Out of the 22 MLAs who had quit the then ruling Congress in March this year in support of Scindia's move of leaving the party, 15 emerged victorious, while seven others, including three ministers, lost the poll battle.

Expressing happiness over the BJP's victory, Scindia said, "I express my gratitude towards the voters for giving a clear mandate to the BJP. The results of the bypolls proved that both former chief ministers Kamal Nath and Digvijay Singh were betrayers. It has become a habit of the Congress to question the credibility of the EVMs by not accepting the mandate."