By-election results for 12 seats across 8 states

In Deoband, Congress’s Mavia Ali, defeated his nearest rival SP’s Meena Rana, wife of late minister Rajendra Singh Rana of SP by 3,559 votes.

While BJP’s Kapil Dev Agarwal has won from the Muzffarnagar seat, Mavia Ali of Congress won the Deoband defeating SP candidate Meena Rana. In yet another setback to the Samajwadi Party, Congress won the Deoband constituency – after 27 years. The ruling party lost Deoband in Saharanpur district and Muzaffarnagar seats and could manage to retain the Bikapur seat in Faizabad district.

However, Congress win in Muslim-dominated Deoband in Uttar Pradesh will come as a morale-booster for the party.

In Bidar, Congress nominee Rahim Khan finished on top, defeating Prakash Khandre of the BJP by 22,721 votes.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies won seven of 12 Assembly seats across eight states in bypolls on Sunday.

In Muzaffarnagar Assembly seat, BJP candidate Kapil Deo Agarwal defeated his nearest SP rival Gaurav Swarup Bansal by 7,352 votes.

The polls were held on February 13 amidst a boycott of the election by Congress and AAP, making it a one-sided contest for the Akali Dal.

This seat had fell vacant following death of ruling Samajwadi Party MLA Mitrasen Yadav. In Bihar, the RJD-JD(U)-Congress Grand Alliance, which won the Assembly elections by a massive majority, faced an embarrassment after the Congress candidate was defeated in Harlakhi constituency by the BJP’s ally, the Rashtriya Lok Samata Party. Ram Niwas Sharma, district election officer told The Indian Express that while SP candidate Anand Sen got 68,896 votes, RLD candidate Munna Singh Chauhan got 62,456 votes.

The Muzaffarnagar seat, which was ruled by the Samajwadi Party since 2012, was put in the sensitive category during polls.

The seat fell vacant after sitting Congress legislator Ramanjit Singh Sikki resigned in October 2015 over last year’s incidents of sacrilege of Sikh holy book, Guru Granth Sahib, in Punjab and the state government failing to contain such incidents. He said that Congress candidate on the seat, Asad Ahmad lost his deposit as well as he got merely about 2945 votes.