The ruling BJP comfortably won the bypoll from Jasdan Assembly seat in Gujarat on Sunday, taking its tally in the House to 100, while the Congress won the Kolebira(ST) Assembly bypoll in Jharkhand.

With this victory, the Congress increases its tally to 8 in the 82-member Jharkhand Assembly. The bypoll was necessitated after Enos Ekka of Jharkhand Party, who represented the constituency in the Assembly, lost his membership following his conviction in a murder case. Babulal Marandi’s Jharkhand Vikas Morcha had supported the Congress.

In Gujarat, BJP candidate Kunvarji Bavaliya defeated Congress nominee Avsar Nakiya  by a margin of 19,979 votes, officials said. The by-election was necessitated after Bavaliya, an influential Koli community leader who had won the seat on a Congress ticket in 2017, resigned from the party and also the Assembly, and joined the BJP.

With this, the BJP now has 100 MLAs in the 182-member Gujarat Legislative Assembly, while the Congress tally has come down to 76.

At the end of the counting of votes, Bavaliya secured a total 90,262 votes as against Nakiya’s 70,283, the officials said.

A total 2,146 votes were cast as NOTA, they said.

Polling for the Jasdan Assembly seat was held on December 20 and a voter turnout of 71.27 per cent was recorded.

The bypoll became a battle of prestige between the ruling BJP and the Opposition Congress in the wake of the latter winning the just held Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh.

Bavaliya, who quit as an Assembly member on July 2, was made a Cabinet Minister in the BJP Government the same day. As the Congress candidate in 2017, Bavaliya had won over BJP’s Bharat Boghara by a margin of 9,277 votes.