THE AAP, still recovering from its bruising loss in Delhi assembly elections earlier this year, has found new momentum in the latest round of state byelections. Having retained two seats—Ludhiana West in Punjab and Visavadar in Gujarat—the party is viewing the outcome not just as a return to form, but as a signal of a viable alternative to the BJP.
In isolation, the wins might appear routine, but the increased margins—which have come at the expense of the Congress—have allowed the party to project confidence. In Visavadar, the BJP candidate got almost the same number of votes (59,147 in 2022 and 58,388 in 2025), but the AAP saw an increase of around 6 per cent: its candidate Gopal Italia secured 75,942 votes compared with the 66,210 the party had got in 2022.
AAP convener Arvind Kejriwal said the result proved that the real contest in Gujarat is now between the AAP and the BJP. In the 2022 Gujarat assembly elections, the Congress had won 17 seats; the AAP had five. Since then, five Congress MLAs have defected to the BJP and won the subsequent byelections. Meanwhile, only one of the AAP’s five MLAs defected, and the seat—Visavadar—is still with the AAP. During the 2022 polls, the AAP had nearly 13 per cent vote share, while the Congress lost over 14 per cent.
It was a similar story in Ludhiana West, one of the five seats across four states that went to the polls last week. And while it might be too early to argue that the AAP will see an upswing, the aggressive celebrations have given it an opportunity to regain control over the messaging.
For the Congress, the reality has not changed much. Its reasons to not align with the AAP are understandable. It feels the AAP’s rise eats into its kitty, and it needs to recover lost ground by going alone, as it did in Haryana and Delhi.
The Congress’s efforts to infuse life into its cadre by empowering the district units is still a work in progress. Gujarat Congress president Shaktisinh Gohil took responsibility for the byelection losses and resigned. The party’s Ludhiana West candidate and former minister Bharat Bhushan Ashu also stepped down as state unit working president.
The big boost for the Congress came in Kerala. The party’s impressive victory in Nilambur—where Aryadan Shoukath defeated the CPI(M)’s M. Swaraj by over 11,000 votes—comes as a potential upset for the ruling left government ahead of the assembly elections next year.
Nilambur is part of the Wayanad Lok Sabha seat, represented by Priyanka Gandhi, and the result points to her overarching presence in the region. With anti-incumbency high against Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, the Nilambur result will bolster the Congress’s morale.
However, the party would have to be a lot more cautious about the manner in which it deals with intra-party issues. Thiruvanathapuram MP Shashi Tharoor’s recent praise for Prime Minister Narendra Modi—he said the latter was a “prime asset”—has only added to the Congress’s messaging troubles. Tharoor might have “weakened” the party’s official line of criticising Modi’s foreign policy record, but the Congress has a bigger dilemma: discipline risks alienating a prominent face ahead of the assembly elections, while silence risks muddling the national message.
Kerala aside, the Congress has continued to struggle. In West Bengal, the Trinamool Congress, predictably, swept the Kaliganj byelection with a massive margin. Alifa Ahmed, whose late father once held the seat, won with over 50,000 votes. The BJP came second, relegating the Congress-left alliance to third, a worrying sign for the opposition bloc hoping to stay competitive in the 2026 assembly elections.
In 2021, the BJP had won 77 seats in West Bengal, an increase of 74 over the 2016 assembly elections. Next year’s assembly elections are expected to witness a much more polarising campaign in wake of the Bangladesh crisis, Operation Sindoor and communal violence after the passage of Waqf Bill in Parliament.
In the fifth byelection, the BJP predictably kept control of Gujarat’s Kadi, a reserved constituency, where its candidate Rajendra Chavda won by nearly 40,000 votes.
But that was the only win for the BJP in this round of byelections. “It shows people’s anger against the BJP on many issues, including the Pahalgam attack, as the government has not been able to catch even one killer after months,” said Congress spokesperson Surpriya Shrinate.
The tenure of the new MLAs might be brief, but the political signals are hard to miss. These byelections, widely seen as a precursor to more consequential contests in Kerala, West Bengal, Gujarat and Punjab, have offered clues about the national mood, and what parties must fix.
But the broader message from this round of byelections may not lie in who won or lost individual seats, but in how the shifting margins and alliances could tilt the political centre of gravity. For the AAP, the wins were a badly needed reprieve. For the BJP, the votes polled were a sign of hope and assertion in Bengal and Gujarat. For the Trinamool, it was a signal of strength ahead of the assembly elections. And for the Congress, it was about deep introspection and a tale of caution in Kerala, where it would want to avoid what it did in Haryana, squandering a chance to convert favourable sentiment into victory. The AAP has also shown that it is never too late to reinvent, which is perhaps a signal to other parties struggling for relevance.
There is one more outcome of these polls that everyone will be keenly watching. Sanjeev Arora, the AAP’s winning candidate in Ludhiana West, currently holds a Rajya Sabha seat. There has been speculation on who would be the replacement. Kejriwal has denied that he will go to the Rajya Sabha. If he doesn’t, Manish Sisodia is another strong contender, but he also carries an outsider tag. Given how crucial the Punjab elections are for the party, it will be under pressure to bet on a local face. Everyone will be watching.