Bengal bypolls: Unprecedented victory for TMC on 4 seats
At all four seats , which are located in districts along the Bangladesh border, the BJP sought to make the attack on Hindus during Durga puja in the neighbouring country an issue
Unprecedented margins of victory, running into around 150,000 votes in two assembly constituencies having 230,000 and 290,000 voters, and comfortable wins in two others marked the Trinamool Congress’ triumph over the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the by-polls held on October 30 to four assembly seats in West Bengal.
The BJP, which won the Dinhata seat by 57 votes and Santipur, by 15878 votes in the March-April election, lost the seats by 164089 and 64675 votes respectively. Polls in these constituencies had to be held because the winners, Nisith Pramanik and Jagannath Sarkar, decided to retain their Lok Sabha seats instead after the BJP lost the state elections comprehensively.
At Khardah and Gosaba, where polls had to be held as the TMC’s winning candidates died, the BJP lost by 93832 and 143051 votes respectively.
The BJP candidates in Gosaba, Dinhata and Khardah lost their deposits.
A TMC leader claimed the margins in the state polls were the highest ever. “The margins in Dinhata and Gosaba are the highest recorded in Bengal assembly polls. When three candidates of a party ruling at the centre lose their deposit, it proves all other parties (other than the ruling TMC) have lost their relevance in the state,” said Saugata Roy, an MP from the TMC.
At all four seats, which are located in districts along the Bangladesh border, the BJP sought to make the attack on Hindus during Durga puja in the neighbouring country an issue.
Cooch Behar district’s Dinhata is in the north Bengal region where the BJP defeated the TMC in most of the seats in both 2019 Lok Sabha and the March-April state polls.
Though the BJP wrested 77 seats in the March-April polls, its tally in the assembly effectively came down to 70 on Tuesday; five BJP legislators have joined the TMC since June although they have not resigned from their party. The ruling party, on the other hand, has won 217 of Bengal’s 294 seats.
Top state BJP leaders argued on Tuesday that voters faced intimidation and its workers were not allowed to campaign although more than 90 companies of Central armed police forces were deployed in Bengal by the Election Commission. The turnout on October 30 was around 65%.
After the win, Mamata Banerjee tweeted: “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!”
“At Dinhata and Gosaba, where the margins are exceptionally high, we were not allowed to hold meetings. If the trend continues, we will see similar results in the future. Terror holds the key in Bengal,” BJP national vice-president Dilip Ghosh, who was the party’s state president till September, said, indirectly referring to the coming civic body elections.
The victory came days after Mamata Banerjee and her nephew, TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, toured Goa and Tripura respectively to challenge the BJP in those states in the coming assembly polls. TMC leaders interpreted this as people’s desire to see the 66-year-old chief minister as face of the opposition against Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
“A cracker-free Diwali in true sense. Wishing folks at @BJP4India a very Happy Diwali!” tweeted Abhishek Banerjee.
“We knew we would win all four seats but the scale of the victory projects Mamata Banerjee as the only face against the BJP in India,” said minister and TMC secretary general Partha Chatterjee.
Six months ago, the Dinhata seat was won by MP Nisith Pramanik who was made Union minister of state for home affairs in July. Scrutiny of Tuesday’s results showed that BJP received only 97 of around 800 votes at the polling booth in Pramanik’s own neighbourhood where he cast his vote on October 30.
“The results have proved that Pramanik is nothing but a paper tiger,” said TMC’s Udayan Guha who defeated Ashok Mondal, a former Forward Bloc leader, at Dinhata.
For the Congress, which, like the Left parties, has no assembly seat in Bengal for the first time since Independence, the results brought more bad news.
The vote share of the Congress at Santipur, the only seat it contested, was 0.37%. The national party got less votes than NOTA which accounted for 1.07 % of the votes polled in all four seats and the Revolutionary Socialist Party, one of the Left Front partners, which secured 0.4 % at Gosaba, the only seat it contested .
“Our organisation has become extremely weak. We have faced repeated attacks during panchayat and assembly polls,” said state Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury who has repeatedly accused the chief minister of helping the BJP by poaching Congress leaders in Goa and Tripura and posing a challenge to Sonia Gandhi.
“The BJP has not done well even in most of the other states where bypolls where held. It was anticipated that TMC might win all four seats since ruling parties are always in an advantageous position in bypolls. What is significant is the speed at which the BJP’s vote share is depleting in Bengal,” said Kolkata-based political science professor Udayan Bandopadhyay.