TMC sweeps WB bypolls as Cong, RJD get big wins
KOLKATA/PATNA/KOHLAPUR: The Trinamool Congress registered comfortable wins in the Asansol Lok Sabha constituency and the Ballygunge assembly segment by-polls, while the Congress retained its Kolhapur North assembly seat in Maharashtra and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD ) defeated the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in bypoll for the Bochahan assembly seat in Bihar.
Congress candidate Yashoda Verma was maintaining a significant lead over Komal Janghel of the BJP in the Khairagarh assembly bypoll in Chhattisgarh where counting was underway.
At the contest for the Ballygunge assembly bypoll, TMC leader and former Union minister Babul Supriyo defeated his nearest rival, Saira Shah Halim of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPI(M), by a margin of 20,228 votes.
Supriyo garnered 51,199 votes against Halim’s 30,971 votes.
BJP’s Keya Ghosh was a distant third after she bagged 13,220 votes, while Kamruzzaman Choudhury of the Congress pocketed just 5,218 votes.
In Asansol, actor-turned politician Shatrughan Sinha of the TMC defeated BJP’s Agnimitra Paul by 3,03,209 votes. The BJP had won the seat in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls by 1.97 lakh votes when Supriyo, who was then in the BJP beat TMC’s Moon Moon Sen.
The by-polls, which took place on April 12, were necessitated as Supriyo resigned as the MP of Asansol after switching over to the TMC from the BJP, while state minister Subrata Mukherjee, who represented Ballygunge, died last year.
West Bengal Chief Minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee thanked the voters of Asansol and Ballygunge for handing a decisive mandate to the ruling party nominees.
“We consider this to be our people’s warm ‘Shubho Nababarsho’ gift to our ‘Ma-MatiManush’ organisation. Salute to the voters for reposing faith in us, yet again,” she added.
Sinha said he was “grateful to Asansol’s people and to Mamata Banerjee for this victory.”
Reacting to the poll trends, BJP state president Sukanta Majumdar said that in general the party in power in a state emerges victorious in by-elections.
“But, I can assure you that we will win back Asansol in 2024. We would defeat TMC’s reign of terror in the next Lok Sabha polls,” he said.
In Bihar, the RJD stunned the ruling NDA on Saturday, after its candidate Amar Paswan
defeated his nearest BJP rival Baby Kumari by a massive margin of 36,658 votes in the by-poll to Bochahan assembly seat.
Paswan (33), who made his debut from the reserved seat last represented by his late father Musafir, polled 82,547 votes while Kumari, a former MLA who had proverbially started off as the favourite, got only 45,889 votes.
Tejashwi Yadav, who had spearheaded the RJD’s highvoltage campaign for the by-election, expressed delight over the victory, which raises his party’s tally to 76 in the 243strong assembly.
“The Bochahan by-poll result is an indictment, by the electorate, of the double engine NDA government that is made up of four parties, and which has left education, health, law and order and agriculture in tatters on account of its anti-people policies,” Yadav tweeted.
The RJD had won 75 seats in the 2020 assembly polls, the highest for any party, though it now has a tally one less than that of the BJP, which had recently inducted three turncoat MLAs of the Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP).
The VIP candidate finished a distant third, polling only 29,726 votes.
In the bypolls for the Kolhapur North assembly constituency in Maharashtra, Congress candidate Jayashri Jadhav garnered 96,176 votes to defeat BJP’s Satyajeet Kadam by a margin of over 18,000 votes, handing a boost to the ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) in the state.
The by-election was necessitated following the death of sitting Congress MLA Chandrakant Jadhav due to Covid-19 in December 2021. The Congress had fielded the late legislator’s widow from this seat. The bypoll was held on April 12 in which 61.19% voter turnout was recorded.
Following the result, the workers of the Congress, which shares power in the state with the Shiv Sena and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), celebrated the victory by dancing to the tune of music and throwing ‘gulal’.
Speaking to reporters after her win, Jadhav thanked the voters and said all three constituents of the MVA worked together to clinch the victory.
Maharashtra Congress chief Nana Patole termed the party’s win as “victory of progressive thoughts”.
Maharashtra BJP president Chandrakant Patil said his party
accepts the decision given by the voters.