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Business News/ Politics / Policy/  BJP wins UP, Arunachal bypolls, TMC victorious in West Bengal
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BJP wins UP, Arunachal bypolls, TMC victorious in West Bengal

BJP retains Sikandra in Uttar Pradesh, wrests Pakke-Kasang and Likabali seats from Congress in Arunachal Pradesh, TMC wins Sabang bypoll in West Bengal

TMC candidate Gita Rani Bhunia (left) with husband Manas Bhunia after winning Sabang assembly bypoll in West Midnapore district on Sunday. Photo: PTIPremium
TMC candidate Gita Rani Bhunia (left) with husband Manas Bhunia after winning Sabang assembly bypoll in West Midnapore district on Sunday. Photo: PTI

Kolkata: Another traditional Congress bastion in West Bengal fell to the Trinamool Congress with Gita Rani Bhunia, wife of former legislator Manas Bhunia, winning the bypoll to the Sabang assembly constituency in West Midnapore district by a huge margin.

Apart from this, result of bypolls in three other assembly constituencies were also announced. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) retained Sikandra in Uttar Pradesh and wrested Pakke-Kasang and Likabali seats from Congress in Arunachal Pradesh.

In West Bengal’s Sabang seat, Bhunia received 106,179 votes in the bypoll and won by a margin of 64,000. Rita Mandal of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPM, finished second with 41,987 votes, followed by the BJP’s Antara Bhattacharyya, who received 37,476 votes. Congress candidate Chiranjib Bhowmik received a little over 18,000 votes.

Even amid the Trinamool Congress’s landslide victory across the state, Manas Bhunia won by over 50,000 votes in the 2016 assembly election, contesting as a Congress candidate backed by the Left Front. He was first elected from Sabang back in 1982, and has consistently held it from 2001.

But after the 2016 election, he defected to the Trinamool Congress, and has now become a member of the Rajya Sabha. The BJP’s gain was remarkable: in the 2016 assembly election, the party had received only 5,610 votes.

Left leaders in West Bengal have been talking of allying with the Congress party in local elections, but the CPM and Congress chose to field separate candidates for the Sabang bypoll. The results show even if they had fought together, only the margin of victory would have been smaller for the Trinamool Congress.

The results show that the gap between the ruling Trinamool Congress and the Left parties led by the CPM continues to widen, said Prasenjit Bose, an economist and political analyst. The BJP is consistently gaining ground, and going into next year’s panchayat election in the state, the trend is likely to continue, he added.

CPM’s state secretary Surjya Kanta Mishra said the results show that the Left parties are the only alternative to the Trinamool Congress, while reiterating that the election was rigged and that the CPM was forced to withdraw polling agents from at least 69 booths.

In Uttar Pradesh’s Sikandra seat, the Samajwadi Party (SP) and Congress, which had contested previous assembly elections unsuccessfully together, had parted ways for the bypoll.

BJP’s Ajit Singh Pal got 73,284 votes, while SP’s Seema Sachan finished second at 61,423 votes, leading to a victory margin of 11,861 votes. Congress’s Prabhakar Pandey was in the third position with 19,084 votes. The bypoll for the seat was necessitated by the death of sitting BJP MLA Mathura Prasad Pal in July.

By wresting the two seats in Arunachal Pradesh, the BJP has increased its tally in the state legislative assembly. BJP now has 49 MLAs in the 60-member state assembly. Nine MLAs are from the Peoples’ Party of Arunachal (PPA) and one each are independent and from the Congress. Interestingly, both the seats were won by victory margins of below 500 votes.

BJP’s B.R. Waghe won the Pakke-Kasang seat by a margin of 475 votes. Former deputy chief minister and senior Congress leader Kameng Dolo was the only other candidate. While, 3,517 votes went in the favour of Waghe, Dolo got 3,042 votes.

Similarly, in the Likabali seat, BJP’s Kardo Nyigyor won by a margin of just 305 votes. While 3,461 votes went in his favour, Gumke Riba of PPA got 3,156 votes. Congress candidate Modam Dini got 362 votes and independent candidate, Sengo Taipodia, polled 675 votes.

Anuja in New Delhi contributed to this story.

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Published: 25 Dec 2017, 04:08 AM IST
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