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MaiharBhopal: The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, which had lost the recent election for the Jhabua-Ratlam parliamentary seat in Madhya Pradesh, today bounced back by winning the by-election and capturing the Maihar Assembly seat that was traditionally considered a Congress turf.

BJP’s Narayan Tripathi, who secured 45285 of the total 86777 votes polled defeated his nearest rival Manish Patel of the Congress by 12993 votes. The other main contestants -Ramlakhan Singh Patel (BSP) and Ramnivas Urmalia (Samajwadi Party) have lost their deposit.

By-election 16/02/2016 : Counting of votes/result
District Assembly Candidate Party No. of Votes
SATNA MAIHAR NARAYAN TRIPATHI BJP 45285
SATNA MAIHAR MANISH PATEL INC 32292
SATNA MAIHAR RAMLAKHAN SINGH PATEL BSP 3504
SATNA MAIHAR RAMNIVAS URMALIYA SP 2032
SATNA MAIHAR NOTA NOTA 1383
SATNA MAIHAR SHIV WARAN Independent 822
SATNA MAIHAR RAMBAHOR TIWARI Independent 307
SATNA MAIHAR PHOOLCHANDRA BAUDDH Independent 215
SATNA MAIHAR PRAMOD PANDEY Independent 181
SATNA MAIHAR KAMAL SINGH MARKAM Independent 170
SATNA MAIHAR DARBARI LAL SINGH PATEL Independent 130
SATNA MAIHAR RAMKUSHAL KEWAT RMGP 109
SATNA MAIHAR ISHWAR CHANDRA TRIPATHI Independent 104
SATNA MAIHAR JITENDRA KUMAR Independent 99
SATNA MAIHAR ABDUL ALIM Independent 77
SATNA MAIHAR AVNISH TIWARI Independent 67
Total 86777
By-election 13/02/2016 : Voter Turnout (In %)
District Assembly/Constituency Male(In%) Female(In%) Total(In%)
SATNA MAIHAR 71.92 71.61 71.765

This election was significant for both the ruling BJP and Congress. BJP’s image was dented by the Congress victory in the Ratlam-Jhabua Lok Sabha election and another Maihar would have put a blot and a huge question mark on Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister’s popularity. On the other side, the Congress party had a huge stake in this election. A victory in this election, would have boosted the confidence in the Congress rank and file.

The victory in Maihar has come as a shot in the arm of Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan. Pressure was mounting on him and with today’s victory now he will have the opportunity to silence his detractors within his own party and also have a free-run to implement his policies and programmes with an eye on the Assembly election in 2018.