TMC 4/4, BJP 0/4; Green Sweeps Bengal By-Elections

Trinamool Congress (TMC) has won all four seats that underwent assembly by-elections on Wednesday, wresting three from BJP. The by-election results came out on Saturday, showed the winning momentum by Mamata Banerjee’s party, a month after TMC’s Lok Sabha sweep. Out of the four seats- Ranaghat Dakshin, Bagda and Raiganj and Maniktala, the first three were won by BJP in the 2021 Assembly polls in which Mamata Banerjee came back to power for the third consecutive time, while the Maniktala seat was won by TMC.

After the demise of TMC MLA Sadhan Pande, the seat remained vacant for a long but his wife Supti Pande won the seat in the by-polls for TMC with a huge margin, leaving BJP’s Kalyan Choubey to trail far behind after multiple rounds of counting on Saturday. By-polls became necessary in the other three seats after the BJP MLAs had jumped ship, joined TMC, eventually resigned from the MLA post in order to contest the Lok Sabha 2024 polls for TMC. All three former BJP MLAs failed to win the Lok Sabha seats for TMC but the party decided to repeat at least of two them in their old assembly seats for the by-polls. Krishna Kalyani former BJP MLA, has won the Raiganj seat in Uttar Dinajpur for TMC, much ahead of Manas Kumar Ghosh of the saffron camp.

Similarly, Mukut Mani Adhikari kept TMC ahead of BJP nominee Manoj Kumar Biswas by in Ranaghat Dakshin. He, like Kalyani, was the BJP MLA in the same seat in 2021. But the big surprise came from Bagda where TMC’s Madhuparna Thakur defeated BJP’s Binay Kumar Biswas in their own bastion dominated by the ‘Matua community’. While the Lok Sabha battle saw a bitter fight between TMC and BJP over the Matua vote, which also led to a showdown in the head sect ‘Thakur family’, but BJP’s Santanu Thakur had managed to win the Bongaon Lok Sabha seat. But in a month since then, TMC has wrested the Bagda assembly seat from BJP, one that came under the same Lok Sabha constituency. Madhuparna, 25 is the daughter of TMC Rajya Sabha MP Mamata Bala Thakur and belongs to the same influential Thakur family. She will be the youngest MLA in the Bengal assembly.