Datia

In a see‑saw contest, Congress candidate Ghanshyam Singh held a narrow lead of 1,786 votes over BJP’s Ashutosh Tiwari after the sixth round of counting on Monday in the Datia assembly by‑election in Madhya Pradesh, officials said.

In the initial couple of rounds, Tiwari was ahead of Singh.

After the completion of the sixth of 15 rounds of counting, Singh secured 25,856 votes, while Tiwari bagged 24,070 votes, the officials said.

The counting of votes commenced at 8 am at the Polytechnic College under tight security.

The bypoll was necessitated after a Delhi court in April this year sentenced Congress MLA Rajendra Bharti to three years' imprisonment in a cheating case, leading to the termination of his assembly membership.

Besides Congress's Ghanshyam Singh and BJP nominee Ashutosh Tiwari, 19 other candidates also contested the Datia bypoll. Voting was held on July 30, and recorded a 71.44 per cent turnout.

Bharti had defeated BJP leader and former state home minister Narottam Mishra by over 7,700 votes in the 2023 assembly elections.

In the 230-member Madhya Pradesh assembly, the BJP has 164 MLAs, the Congress 64 and the Bharat Adivasi Party one legislator.

The outcome of the bypoll may not alter the stability of the BJP government in the state, but political observers believe it carries wider implications, coming against the backdrop of recent student protests and the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan as Union education minister.

According to analysts, the closely watched result could significantly shape the political standing of both the ruling BJP and Opposition Congress in the state ahead of the 2028 assembly elections.

The Datia bypoll is also the first electoral test for newly appointed BJP state president Hemant Khandelwal.

Hours ahead of the counting, the Congress suspended Bharti from the party's primary membership on Sunday night, according to an official statement.

Bharti, who represented the Datia seat in the assembly before his disqualification, said the action taken against him was wrong and that the public would respond to this in the 2028 Madhya Pradesh assembly polls.

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He alleged that the entire episode (a reference to the cheating case and his subsequent suspension from the party) was a "conspiracy" by Narottam Mishra and that Congress candidate Ghanshyam Singh had contested the election in collusion with him.