Khela sesh: TMC snatches 2 assembly seats from BJP, retains 2 in Bengal bypolls
Apart from Dinhata, Trinamool Congress wrested control of Santipur constituency from the BJP while retained Gosaba and Kharadaha seats with a comfortable margin.
Trinamool Congress (TMC) defeated the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in all the four assembly seats in West Bengal, the results of the assembly bypolls declared on Tuesday showed.
The two major win for the TMC came in Dinhata and Santipur constituencies, where the West Bengal's ruling party wrested control of the seats won by the BJP in the earlier assembly elections.
In Dinhata, TMC's Udayan Guha defeated BJP's Ashok Mondal by a massive margin of 163,005 votes. The bypoll to the constituency was necessitated after Nisith Pramanik decided to remain at Parliament after was elevated as a Union minister of state during the recent Union Cabinet reshuffle.
TMC's Braja Kishor Goswami defeated Niranjan Biswas by a margin of 64,022 votes in Santipur, to secure the seat that BJP's Lok Sabha MP Jagannath Sarkar had won earlier this year, but did not take oath for to retain his parliamentarian's chair.
In two other constituencies, TMC retained the seats with a signifcant margin.
In Gosaba, TMC's Subrata Mondal defeated BJP's Palash Rana by a massive margin of 141,893 votes while veteran TMC leader and state minister Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay registered victory over BJP's Joy Saha by a gap of 93,449 votes.
Sovandeb Chattopadhyay, who had earlier won the Bhabanipur assembly constituency, vacated the seat for West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee to contest during the September 30 bypolls, to retain her membership of the state assembly. Mamata Banerjee won the seat with a thumping majority and decimated BJP's Priyanka Tibrewal.
West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee attributed the victory of her party to the people of state. Taking to Twitter, Banerjee said, “This victory is people's victory, as it shows how Bengal will always choose development and unity over propaganda and hate politics. With people's blessings, we promise to continue taking Bengal to greater heights!”
The bypoll in Dinhata constituency grabbed the attenton of political experts. The BJP wrested the seat — in north Bengal where the party has nurtured support over the years — by 57 votes in the assembly elections earlier this year. The BJP had also bagged seven of the region’s eight Lok Sabha seats in 2019 and 30 of the 54 assembly constituencies in the eight north Bengal districts.
While the TMC had won Gosaba and Khardaha constituencues during the assembly elections in West Bengal earlier this year, Santipur, apart from Dinhata, was also in the control of the BJP.
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Taking a swipe at Union home minister Amit Shah, Trinamool Congress leader and Rajya Sabha MP Derek O'Brien tweeted that the BJP lost even in the home booth of Union minister of state Nisith Pramanik, as he said that Trinamool rebounded with a margin of more than 1.5 lakh votes.
The Trinamool Congress bagged 213 of the 294 total seats in the Bengal assembly in the previous election, while BJP secured 77 seats. However, with the return of five BJP legislators to the Mamata Banerjee-led party since June, and the TMC winning two other seats during the September bypolls, the ruling party's tally increased to 215. With Tuesday's results, the TMC will revise its tally to 217 seats while the BJP will see its strength go down to 70.
