In by-polls to three Lok Sabha seats, the Bharatiya Janata Party retained Khandwa in Madhya Pradesh but lost Mandi in Himachal Pradesh to the Congress. In Dadra and Nagar Haveli, the Shiv Sena registered its first ever LS victory outside Maharashtra, with the party’s Kalaben Delkar winning the seat .

Her late husband, Mohan Delkar, died by suicide in a Mumbai hotel in February, and was the sitting independent MP from there. In his note he blamed top officials of the Union Territory, including the administrator Praful Patel for his death. A case has been filed in Mumbai on the basis of the 15-page letter and the statement of Delkar’s son.

Kalaben Delkar defeated the BJP’s Mahesh Gavit by 51,269 votes. Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut called it a “historic” victory for the party. “First step outside Maharashtra, giant leap towards Delhi via Dadra Nagar Haveli!,” he tweeted.

With this victory, the Shiv Sena now has 19 MPs in Lok Sabha and is the sixth largest party in the house after the BJP, Congress, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagham (DMK), YSR Congress and Trinamool Congress.

From Mandi, Congress candidate, Pratibha Singh, wife of former chief minister, the late Virbhadra Singh, won by 7,490 votes, defeating BJP candidate Brigadier Khushal Chand Thakur (retd). A former two-term member of Parliament from Mandi, Pratibha polled 3,69,565 votes, while her BJP rival Brigadier Khushal Chand Thakur (retd) got 3,62,075 votes. The election was necessitated by the death earlier this year of Ram Swaroop Sharma from the BJP.

Mandi is home district of Himachal chief minister Jairam Thakur, who accepted the defeat, said that sympathy factor for Virbhadra Singh who died in July this year, especially in the tribal areas of Kinnaur and Lahaul and Spiti worked in favour of the Congress. “The Congress also took benefit of the issue of rising prices,” he said. The BJP won Mandi seat in 2019 Lok Sabha elections by a margin of 3.5 lakh votes.

In Madhya Pradesh’s Khandwa, BJP candidate Gyaneshwar Patil defeated Congress candidate Rajnarayan Singh by 81,500 votes. After death of senior BJP leader and five-time Member of Parliament (MP), Nand Kumar Singh Chauhan, BJP gave ticket to OBC leader Patil. In the 2019 Lok Sabha poll the winning margin for BJP was 2,4 lakh votes.