BJP's Bihar setback reflects Gen Z anger, says TMC's Saugata Roy

Saugata Roy. Pic/X

After the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lost its stronghold, Bankipur in Bihar, in the bypolls, Trinamool Congress MP Saugata Roy said on Tuesday that the result reflected the anger of the people and Gen Z towards the BJP.

Jan Suraaj Party president Prashant Kishore defeated BJP candidate Neeraj Kumar by a margin of 19324 votes, as per the Election Commission of India.

"The wind is against the BJP. People and Gen Z are angry with them. So they have to pay for it," Roy told ANI here.

Roy also said that the opposition is demanding accountability on the alleged theft of donations received at Ram Mandir in Ayodhya.

"The opposition wants the Home Minister to apologise and wants the answer on the Ram Mandir donation theft."

Meanwhile, Bharatiya Janata Party BJP chief Nitin Nabin said that the party will "introspect" and review the results of Bankipur and Datia.

"We accept the mandate received in today's three assembly by-elections. We express our heartfelt gratitude to the people of Manjalpur assembly constituency in Gujarat for expressing their faith in the Bharatiya Janata Party. We extend our warm congratulations to all the dedicated workers and office-bearers of the BJP for this victory," he wrote on Monday.

Coming on the heels of intense youth-led protests over exam paper leaks and rising unemployment, the loss signals a shifting political wind across the Hindi heartland, exposing vulnerable fault lines in the BJP's traditional strongholds.

In Bihar's urban bastion of Bankipur--a saffron stronghold since 1995 vacated by BJP National President Nitin Nabin--Jan Suraaj Party founder Prashant Kishor secured his maiden electoral victory by a resounding 19,324 votes.

Simultaneously, in Madhya Pradesh's Datia, the Congress retained the key seat after defeating the BJP by over 6,000 votes.

The BJP's sole consolation came from Gujarat, where it retained the Manjalpur seat in Vadodara, albeit with a drastically reduced victory margin compared to the 2022 elections.

BJP retained the seat, with Satish Patel beating Congress's Bhikhabhai Rabari by 30,630 votes.

But that margin is a steep fall from the 1,00,754-vote landslide the party won there in the 2022 assembly election

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