The Aam Aadmi Party, which entered the fray with much fanfare, failed to make any impact at the hustings.
The Congress has already been deserted by the urban middle classes and the youth, but by outsourcing its battle against the Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi to the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Admi Party, the grand old party could end up inflicting more damage on itself.
The party is finding increasing acceptability in the 18-35 years age group with Rahul Gandhi adding a million followers in the past 2 months and Facebook and Twitter also seeing similar spikes.
Opposition parties disrupted the proceedings of the Parliament for the fourth consecutive day on Tuesday over the demonetisation issue.
Actor-turned-Bharatiya Janata Party nominee Kirron Kher on Wednesday visited former MP Harmohan Dhawan at the latter's residence in Chandigarh apparently to seek support for her candidature, but failed to win over the sulking leader.
The Uttar Pradesh by-election will be the real test for the Modi government. By-election results are not a referendum on Modi but the time has come to analyse whether the Modi government is succeeding in assuring people that the promises it made would be fulfilled, says Dharmendra Kumar Singh.
Demonetisation hit informal sector hard and caused job losses which was not addressed by the budget, Moily said.
