West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress Party (TMC) won all four assembly seats namely, Dinhata, Khardah, Santipur, Gosaba, where by-polls were held on Saturday, 30 October. According to reports, the Trinamool Congress has bagged 75 per cent of the vote share (5,77,222 votes).
The bypolls were necessitated after the BJP MLAs of Dinhata and Santipur resigned to keep their MP seats, and the TMC legislators of Kharadah and Gosaba passed away.
TMC’s Udayan Guha has won the Dinhata seat in Cooch Behar, previously held by the BJP, by a margin of 1,89,575 votes. The seat was previously held by Nisith Pramanik, currently the Minister of State (MoS) in the home ministry. He vacated it after he was awarded a cabinet berth.
In the 2021 Assembly elections, TMC had procured 1,15,978 in Dinhata while BJP had bagged 1,16,035 votes. This means that the BJP’s vote share in the constituency slipped to 11 per cent from the 46.60 earlier, while the Trinamool Congress’ rose to 88 per cent from the earlier 47.58 per cent.
Similarly, the BJP also lost at Santipur in Nadia by 64,675 votes, a seat that was held by its MP Jagannath Sarkar, who had won it in the assembly elections earlier this year. In the by-polls, while BJP’s Niranjan Biswas secured 47,412 votes, the Trinamool’s Braja Kishor Goswami managed 1,12,087 votes.
It may be noted that during the 2021 Assembly elections, BJP MP Jagannath Sarkar had won in the constituency by around 16,000 votes.
Both Dinhata and Santipur are located within a 20-km radius of the India-Bangladesh international border.
Like Dinhata and Shantipur, TMC clinched the Gosaba assembly seat also with its candidate Subrata Mondal winning by a margin of 1,43,051 votes. Earlier, in the 2021 Assembly elections, BJP had bagged 82,014 votes in the constituency as compared to 18,423 votes it secured during the recently concluded by-polls. With this loss, BJP saw a dip of almost 77 per cent in its vote share, while TMC clenched a 53 per cent gain in the total vote share as compared to its performance during the 2021 Assembly elections.
Likewise, in Kardah BJP lost by 93,832 votes. While the TMC’s Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay secured 1,14,086 votes here, the BJP’s Joy Saha ended up with 20,254 votes.
In total, the BJP’s vote share in these four seats has plummeted to 15%, while the Trinamool’s has grown to 78 per cent.
My heartiest congratulations to all the four winning candidates!
— Mamata Banerjee (@MamataOfficial) November 2, 2021
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!
Banerjee congratulated the winning candidates and said in a tweet, “Bengal will always choose development and unity over propaganda and hate politics”.
While the ruling party is expected to win by-polls, especially in the immediate aftermath of assembly elections, the striking collapse in voteshare for the BJP will give the party plenty of cause for concern. While it is too early to reach far fetched conclusions based on the results of the by-polls, the BJP in Bengal will have to recollect itself quickly if it is to mount a serious charge in the 2024 Lok Sabha Elections.
