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The ruling Trinamool Congress candidate Krishnendu Narayan Chowdhury, defeated his nearest CPI-M rival Kaushik Mishra by a margin of 20,452 votes in English Bazar (Malda). Chowdhury was a sitting MLA from the same assembly seat, earlier on a Congress ticket. But he switched loyalty to join Trinamool post break-up of the alliance and chief minister Mamata Banerjee awarded him with a ministry.
However, in a setback to the ruling Trinamool Congress, another former Congress MLA Humayun Kabir from Murshidabad's Rejinagar, who made a similar switch-over to TMC and was made a state minister, lost the seat to Congress candidate Rabiul Alam Chowdhury by over 11,722 votes.
The switch over of sitting Congress MLAs in Engish-Bazar and Rejinagar necessitated the by-poll.
The Nalhati assembly seat, which was again held by Congress candidate and President Pranab Mukherjee's son Abhijeet Mukherjee, went to Forward Bloc. The Left party's candidate Dipak Chatterjee defeated the nearest Congress candidate by a margin of 7,242 votes.
The seat fell vacant after Abhijeet Miukherjee had quit to fight the Lok Sabha by-election from Jangipur.
Incidentally, the TMC candidates finished third in both Rejinagar and Nalhati. TMC general secretary Mukul Roy, however, refused to concede Left's gain because of Congress—TMC break up. "TMC can sweep the state on its own. The by-poll result is not a set back to us. Rather, we have managed to win one seat in Congress strong hold Malda," Roy said.
Commenting on the by-poll result, senior state Congress leader Deepa Dasmunshi said, "It is satisfactory as we have proved we can win seats on our own. Our candidate has defeated a TMC minister. But, we expected a better result in Malda and Nalhati," she said. Left, too, welcomed its performance as satisfactory.
