TMC steamrolls Oppn in Bengal Assembly bypolls, continues LS victory streak

The Trinamool Congress continued its winning streak from the recent Lok Sabha elections by sweeping the West Bengal assembly bypolls on Saturday, wresting Raiganj, Bagda, and Ranaghat Dakshin seats from the BJP and securing a record victory margin in Maniktala.

Trinamool Congress (TMC) candidates Krishna Kalyani, Madhuparna Thakur and Mukut Mani Adhikari won the Raiganj, Bagda, and Ranaghat Dakshin seats respectively, while Supti Pandey won in the Maniktala segment in Kolkata.

The bypolls in the four assembly seats were held on July 10.

The BJP secured the second position in all four seats, while the Left-Congress alliance was a distant third and also lost deposits in two assembly segments.

 

In Raiganj in Uttar Dinajpur district, Kalyani won by a margin of 50,077 votes over his nearest BJP rival Manas Kumar Ghosh.

Kalyani got 86,479 votes, while Ghosh bagged 36,402.

Madhuparna Thakur, daughter of TMC Rajya Sabha MP and Matua leader Mamatabala Thakur, won by a margin of 33,455 votes over her rival Binay Kumar Biswas of the BJP in the Bagda assembly seat in North 24 Parganas district.

Madhuparna Thakur got 107,706, while Biswas secured 74,251.

Mukut Mani Adhikari of the TMC defeated BJP nominee Manoj Kumar Biswas by 39,048 votes in Ranaghat Dakshin in North 24 Parganas.

Adhikari bagged 113,533 votes, while Biswas pocketed 74,485.

With this victory, the ruling party in West Bengal won the Matua community-majority Bagda and Ranaghat Dakshin after a gap of eight years.

TMC nominee Supti Pandey won by a record margin of 62,312 votes in Maniktala in Kolkata over her nearest rival Kalyan Chaubey of the BJP, who is also the All India Football Federation (AIFF) president.

Pandey, the widow of former TMC minister Sadhan Pandey, bagged 83,110 votes whereas Chaubey got 20,798 votes.

The BJP secured Ranaghat Dakshin, Bagda, and Raiganj segments in the 2021 assembly polls.

Despite the BJP winning the three seats in 2021, the MLAs later switched to the TMC.

The three seats fell vacant after MLAs Kalyani, Adhikari, and Biswajit Das of Bagda resigned from their posts to contest Lok Sabha polls on TMC tickets.

Kalyani, who lost to BJP's Kartik Chandra Paul in the Lok Sabha polls, was re-nominated from Raiganj in the bypolls.

Adhikari, who was defeated by BJP's Jagannath Sarkar from the Ranaghat Lok Sabha seat, was in the fray again from the Ranaghat Dakshin assembly segment.

The Maniktala seat was won by the TMC in 2021 but became vacant after former state minister Sadhan Pandey died in February 2022.

The bypolls, just a month after the Lok Sabha polls, was a litmus test for all three political outfits, with the BJP hoping to check its electoral slide and retain the three seats it had won last time, a goal which it failed to meet and the TMC aimed to continue its winning streak in the bypolls.

Since the 2021 assembly polls, the TMC has won all the by-elections, except the Sagardighi bypoll in March 2023, which the Congress had won.

West Bengal Chief Minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee thanked the people for the party's resounding victory.

"We thank the people for their faith in us. We will dedicate the by-election and the Lok Sabha poll victories to the martyrs on our July 21 Martyrs' Day rally," she said.

With this victory, the TMC's tally becomes 215 in the 294-member assembly. It also enjoys the support of three BJP MLAs, who switched over to the ruling party but are yet to resign from the House.

The BJP's official tally in the state assembly has come down to 71 from 77 it had won in 2021.

The assembly segments of Haroa and Naihati in North 24 Parganas district, Sitai in Cooch Behar, Taldangra in Bankura, Madarihat in Alipurduars, and Medinipur in Paschim Medinipur are still vacant since their respective sitting MLAs contested and won the Lok Sabha polls.

Reacting to the party's performance in the bypolls, a state BJP leader said they would introspect.

"We will introspect the party's performance. But the TMC did not allow free and fair elections and there were a lot of irregularities. The ruling party had unleashed a reign of terror," BJP state spokesperson Samik Bhattacharya said.

The TMC was quick to counter, dubbing the allegations "baseless".

"The people have rejected the BJP in the last Lok Sabha polls in Bengal and the same thing has happened in the bypolls. The allegation that by-polls were not free and fair are just excuses to hide their own failures," TMC leader Kunal Ghosh said.

The bypoll results are a shot in the arm for the TMC just a month after the party's performance in the Lok Sabha polls when it had bagged 29 parliamentary seats, up from 22 in 2019.

The results are a fresh disappointment for the BJP after its dismal performance in the parliamentary elections when its tally came down to 12 from 18 in 2019.