Ruling parties win all five by-elections, but margins vary sharply

Winning, differently: On the by-election results in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry

The ruling party in each State/UT won all five by-elections, but the results revealed sharply different levels of political competition. Declared on Friday, the verdict came barely five months after the April Assembly elections and offered few surprises in terms of winners.

What varied was the scale of victory. In West Bengal, the BJP retained Nandigram and wrested Rejinagar, securing strong vote shares of 76% and 63%, respectively. In Puducherry, the ruling All India N.R. Congress recorded an emphatic win in Thattanchavady with 61% of the votes.

Why West Bengal produced bigger victories

The strength of the victories in Nandigram and Thattanchavady was partly explained by the circumstances in which those seats fell vacant. Both had been vacated by the respective Chief Ministers, a factor that helped the ruling parties secure emphatic wins.

The West Bengal results also fit a longer political pattern in the State. Assembly victories there have, for decades, functioned as a winner-take-all mandate that the ruling party extends to panchayat and by-elections.

That pattern took shape during the Left Front’s long rule, became entrenched during the Trinamool Congress’s 15 years in power and remains visible during the BJP’s tenure so far. Opposition parties have performed far worse in these contests than they have in Assembly and Lok Sabha elections.

Tamil Nadu remains more competitive

The Tamil Nadu contests were closer. Dharapuram and Madurantakam fell vacant after their AIADMK MLAs resigned and defected to the ruling TVK, which renominated them.

Both legislators won their seats back, with 37% and 40% of the vote, respectively. They led their DMK rival candidates by about eight percentage points.

The contrast with West Bengal reflects the different political cultures of two similarly sized States. While West Bengal’s electoral politics has produced a strong winner-take-all pattern, Tamil Nadu now has a three-way contest that has kept politics competitive.

By-elections generally favour the party in power because voters prefer representatives with access to the government. But the narrower margins in Tamil Nadu show that this advantage did not produce the same dominance seen in West Bengal.

Gains for TVK, concerns for AIADMK

The victories raised the TVK’s tally to 109 in the House, which has a sanctioned membership of 234. However, the narrow margins came despite a no-holds-barred campaign by Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay, suggesting that the expected honeymoon effect did not fully materialise.

The DMK, now the TVK’s principal rival, has demonstrated that it retains a solid base despite its abrupt defeat in May. The AIADMK’s position is more difficult: finishing third in the seats it had won in May has deepened concerns about its decline.

Its leadership will now face sharper questions over whether it can retain its legislators. Four more AIADMK MLAs have joined the TVK, and their seats will go to by-elections.

A challenge to the election mandate

The developments mark a regressive turn in Tamil Nadu, where MLAs are resigning barely months, and sometimes days, into their terms to share in the benefits of office while the ruling party re-fields them. The source describes this practice as defeating the spirit of the anti-defection law and overriding the Assembly election mandate.

That voters rewarded these manoeuvres should concern anyone worried about the quality of representation. The by-election results have therefore strengthened the ruling parties numerically, but they have also exposed the uneven health of electoral competition and the pressures facing representative politics.

Source: The Hindu