Vitthal Radadiya, caught on camera last year threatening a toll-plaza attendant with a gun, switched sides from the Congress to the BJP and won the Porbandar Lok Sabha seat

Ahmedabad, June 5: Gujarat’s ruling BJP today blanked the Congress in all six constituencies that voted in Sunday’s bypoll in a clean sweep that saw a party-hopping Patel leader, who was filmed waving a gun at a toll-plaza attendant, win the seat he resigned last year.

Observers said the six-nil verdict — two Lok Sabha seats and four Assembly segments — reflected an emphatic endorsement of chief minister Narendra Modi’s popularity at a time his party is trying to paper over differences on his possible projection as the spearhead for next year’s battle for Delhi.

Senior Congress leader Hasmukh Patel conceded the results were “disastrous” for the party. “Yes, the party is in bad shape,” he said. “We need to introspect before it is too late.”

The BJP’s victory in the four Assembly by-elections means the party’s tally now goes up to 119 in the 182-member House, while the Lok Sabha results have taken the total number of BJP MPs from the state to 17, the highest since Modi took over.

Elections were held in Porbandar and Banaskantha (both Lok Sabha seats) and Jetpur, Morva Hadaf, Limbadi and Dhoraji. The Congress held all six.

Influential Patel leader Vitthal Radadiya won from Porbandar, the Lok Sabha seat he had resigned last year, defeating his Congress rival Vinu Amipara by 1.48 lakh votes. In Banaskantha, Haribhai Chaudhary defeated Krishna Gadhvi, whose late husband Mukesh Gadhvi had held the seat.

Radadiya, a farmer and well-known co-operative leader, was embroiled in a controversy last year when he was caught on camera threatening a toll-plaza attendant with a gun after being stopped.

The Patel leader, who began his political career by joining the BJP in the nineties, was a Congress MP at the time of the October incident. He contested the Assembly elections last year and won from Dhoraji, while his son, Jayesh, won from Jetpur.

Later, father and son both quit the Congress and joined the BJP, which fielded them from Porbandar and Jetpur. Jayesh won the re-election.

CLP leader Shankersinh Vaghela said the Congress had accepted the people’s verdict, but alleged large-scale “misuse” of government machinery.

Senior BJP leader Yamal Vyas attributed the party’s victory to Modi’s charisma.

Vyas said the “demoralised” Congress was hardly in a position to put up a fight, a point conceded by Hasmukh Patel. The Congress leader said the party was not only “organisationally weak” but the candidates too were “new and inexperienced”, possibly hinting at wrong selection.

In the Limbadi and Morva Hadaf Assembly seats and the Banaskantha Lok Sabha seat, the Congress had fielded relatives of candidates who held them before the by-elections.

Chief minister Modi said the defeat of the Congress candidates in the two Lok Sabha seats was a “reflection of public anger” and an “ultimatum” for the Centre’s ruling party ahead of the Lok Sabha elections due next year.

“The people of Gujarat have given a thumping victory to the BJP and the Congress has fared miserably. The BJP’s emphatic victory and the Congress’s defeat in the two Lok Sabha seats is in a way a message of public anger and an ultimatum to the Congress,” a PTI report quoted him as saying in Delhi.

Cong wins Yavatmal

The Congress today retained the Yavatmal Assembly seat in Maharashtra, which had fallen vacant when the party’s sitting MLA, 44-year-old Nilesh Parvekar, died in a road accident in January.

The Shiv Sena-BJP combine had rejected chief minister Prithviraj Chavan’s appeal to them not to contest the seat as a tribute to the young MLA.

Nilesh’s widow, Nandini, defeated the BJP’s Madan Yerawar by over 15,000 votes.

Yavatmal was one of four seats in the state where Rahul Gandhi had offered tickets to young candidates from long-time Congress families and succeeded in wresting them back from the Opposition and the Nationalist Congress Party.

Nilesh, the nephew of six-time Congress MLA from Yavatmal and state cabinet minister Appasaheb Parvekar, had defeated Yerawar, who was then the sitting MLA, in 2009. He was seen as part of the Rahul brigade in the state and the Congres vice-president had campaigned for him in the elections.

Nandini today polled 62,509 votes, while Yerawar bagged 47,276 votes.