Narayan Tripathi has created history in Madhya Pradesh by switching sides and winning Maihar Assembly polls as candidate of the Congress and the SP, and now of the BJP, each time.
Tripathi has contested four elections in Maihar constituency so far and won thrice. He represented the constituency on SP ticket in 2003, but lost in 2008, when he contested the election again on SP ticket, this time as the party's State president.
In 2013 Assembly polls, he contested the election on Congress ticket and emerged victorious. However, before the last lok Sabha elections, Tripathi switched over to the BJP, and quit the membership of the Assembly, necessitating the bypolls.
The victory of Tripathi in the latest election the result of which was announced on Tuesday is likely to forge new political equations in the Vindhya region, which is represented by Public Relations Minister Rajendra Shukla.
For the past one month, Rajendra Shukla from the BJP and former leader of the Opposition in the State Assembly Ajay Singh from the Congress were camping in Maihar to campaign for their candidates. The victory of Tripathi has given a clear signal that the Congress is fast losing base in the region.
BJP takes Maihar in landslide winMoreover, in this election, the vote percentage of both the BSP and the SP declined. The BSP and SP polled 9,892 and 8,989, respectively. This suggests that probably most of the BSP and SP vote bank shifted to Tripathi
Besides, before the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the victory came as a morale-booster for the BJP after it conceded to the Congress the Jhabua lok Sabha seat in a by-poll shortly after the drubbing in the Bihar Assembly elections, which analysts then took as a sign of declining fortunes of the long-ruling saffron party in the State.