Gujarat CM Narendra Modi, who is leading the charge as BJP’s most likely Prime Ministerial candidate for 2014 polls, has proved his magic and charisma by sweeping the bypolls in Gujarat. Modi helped the BJP win all two Lok Sabha and four Assembly seats where bypolls were held on June 2. All those seats were held by the Congress earlier.
The Porbandar seat has been retained by Vitthal Radadiya, but this time he won on the BJP ticket. He had recently switched over to the saffron party after dumping the Congress. His son Jayesh won the Jetpur assembly bypolls. In Banaskantha, Haribhai Choudhary of the BJP defeated Krishna Gadhvi of the Congress, defying the sympathy vote factor. Krishna’s husband Mukesh Gadhvi’s death had made the seat vacant. But, again the Modi came to BJP’s rescue.
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The BJP snatched Jetpur, Limbadi, Dhoraji and Morva Hadaf assembly seats from the Congress. With this, BJP’s tally has gone up to 119 in the 182-member Gujarat Assembly, while Congress’s tally went down to 57.
While Modi swept the bypolls in Gujarat by conquering all Congress bastions, his bete noire Nitish Kumar lost the Maharajganj Lok Sabha seat to Lalu Yadav’s RJD. Prabhu Nath Singh, who dumped JD(U) to return to the RJD fold defeated state education minister P K Shahi. It was a big setback for Nitish and his leadership. Definitely, Modi has reasons to smile.