West Bengal : Congress, TMC and RJD got victory, BJP remained empty handed
The Trinamool Congress won the Asansol Lok Sabha seat and Ballygunge assembly seat in West Bengal, while the Congress and RJD won one seat each in the by-elections in Maharashtra and Bihar, while the BJP remained empty handed. Congress won in Chhattisgarh, while BJP was disappointed Actor-turned-politician Shatrughan Sinha won the Asansol Lok Sabha by-election in West Bengal.
In West Bengal, Trinamool Congress candidate Sinha defeated her nearest rival BJP’s Agnimitra Paul by a huge margin of 3,03,209 votes in Asansol.
West Bengal | TMC candidate Shatrughan Sinha collected his certificate after winning the Asansol Lok Sabha by-polls. pic.twitter.com/A7sGtnSGVI
— ANI (@ANI) April 16, 2022
BJP MP from Asansol Lok Sabha seat, Babul Supriyo, had joined the Trinamool Congress in September last after tendering his resignation, necessitating a by-election.
Babul Supriyo won the Ballygunge assembly by-election by defeating Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) candidate Saira Shah Halim by a margin of 20,228 votes. Supriyo got 51,199 votes, while Haleem got 30,971 votes. Interestingly, Haleem left behind BJP’s Kea Ghosh, who got 13,220 votes.
West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee thanked the voters of Asansol and Ballygunge for giving decisive mandate to the party candidates. “I wholeheartedly thank the voters of Asansol Parliamentary Constituency and Ballygunge Assembly Constituency for giving decisive mandate to the party’s candidates,” she tweeted. In Asansol, Sinha said that he is grateful to the people of Asansol and Mamata Banerjee for this victory.
BJP’s West Bengal unit president Sukanta Majumdar said it is a general trend that the ruling party in the state usually wins bypolls. The ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance in Maharashtra got a boost on Saturday when the Congress defeated the BJP by a margin of over 18,000 votes in the by-election to the Kolhapur North assembly seat. With this, Congress has retained this seat. Election officials said that Congress-MVA candidate Jayshree Jadhav got 96,176 votes, while BJP’s Satyajit Kadam got 77,426 votes. Jadhav emerged victorious by a margin of 18,750 votes, officials said.
The by-election for this assembly constituency in western Maharashtra’s Kolhapur district was necessitated following the death of Congress MLA Chandrakant Jadhav in December 2021 due to Kovid-19. Congress had fielded the wife of the late MLA from this seat.
Congress’s Maharashtra unit chief Nana Patole termed the party’s victory as a victory for progressive ideas. Patole said, “Efforts were on to hide the failure of the Center on inflation, unemployment, poverty and problems of small farmers and traders by creating religious hatred.” He said that the BJP is facing defeat in all the bypolls, be it in Bihar, Chhattisgarh or West Bengal.
At the same time, the opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) candidate Amar Paswan on Saturday defeated his nearest rival and BJP’s Baby Kumari by a margin of more than 35,000 votes in the by-election to the Bochahan assembly seat in Bihar, which is ruling in the state. It is being told as a setback for the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
RJD wins Bochahan Assembly seat in Bihar bypolls, as per Election Commission pic.twitter.com/jmBQxhspcG
— ANI (@ANI) April 16, 2022
Paswan (33), a first-time contestant, got 82,116 votes, while his nearest rival Kumari got only 45,353 votes. Due to the death of Amar Paswan’s father Musafir Paswan, there was a need to hold a by-election on this seat.
In the Khairagarh assembly seat of Chhattisgarh’s Rajnandgaon district, Yashoda Verma, the ruling party’s Congress candidate, won from her nearest rival BJP’s Komal Janghel. Congress candidate Yashoda Verma won this election by 21,176 votes. Yashoda Verma got 87,879 votes and BJP candidate Komal Jangel got 67,703 votes. NOTA is third in this seat and 2,616 voters of the region used NOTA.
After winning the 2018 assembly elections in Chhattisgarh, the ruling party Congress has won four consecutive by-elections in the state.
