New Delhi, March 2
The assembly by-election results on Thursday brought some solace for the Congress as it wrested one seat each from the BJP and the TMC in Maharashtra and West Bengal respectively and retained a seat in Tamil Nadu with DMK’s support, while the BJP and its ally AJSU bagged one seat each in the western state and Jharkhand.
The ruling Trinamool Congress in West Bengal suffered a shock defeat in Sagardighi which was won by Congress’ Bayron Biswas by 22,986 votes. It is the only seat held by the Congress in the state assembly.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee alleged the Congress and the CPI(M) had entered into an understanding with the BJP to defeat the Trinamool Congress with their “immoral” alliance.
Banerjee also said that her party will go it alone in the 2024 elections, “with the support of common people” and the Congress should refrain from calling itself anti-BJP.
“For the Sagardighi loss, I do not blame anyone… But, there is an immoral alliance, which we strongly condemn. The BJP transferred its votes to the Congress…. everyone played the communal card. The BJP, of course, played the communal card. The Congress, CPI(M), however, turned out to be bigger players in this regard,” she told reporters
By-election to the constituency, seen as a prestige fight for state Congress president Adhir Chowdhury in his home district of Murshidabad, was necessitated following the death of state minister Subrata Saha in December last year.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) managed to hold on to Chinchwad seat in Maharashtra’s Pune but suffered a setback as it failed to Kasba Peth Assembly seat, its stronghold in the district, as Congress candidate Ravindra Dhangekar defeated the saffron party nominee Hemant Rasane.
The BJP held the seat for 28 years. Girish Bapat, the current BJP MP from Pune, represented the seat five times till 2019.
Dhangekar, who was supported by Maha Vikas Aghadi allies Nationalist Congress Party and Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), polled 73,194 votes while Rasane received 62,244 votes, as per figures on the Election Commission’s website after the final round of counting.
While the party’s performance was dismal in the assembly poll in Tripura, Nagaland and Meghalaya, Congress general secretary communications Jairam Ramesh said the bypoll results were “very encouraging”.
“We are building the Congress for the future and those who thought they will make it big by breaking the Congress have not achieved any success,” Ramesh said in an apparent dig at TMC.
The bypolls saw the first direct contest between the ruling BJP-Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena and the opposing MVA after the change of government in Maharashtra in June last year.
As the bypolls had become an issue of prestige for the MVA as well as the ruling Shinde-BJP coalition in the state, senior leaders like NCP president Sharad Pawar, Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis campaigned for their respective candidates.
In Chinchwad seat, BJP’s Ashwini Jagtap was ahead with 1.12 lakh votes against NCP’s Nana Kate who had bagged around 84,000 votes. The election commission was yet to formally declare the result at 8 pm.
The byelection was necessitated due to the death of incumbent BJP MLAs Mukta Tilak (Kasba) and Laxman Jagtap (Chinchwad).
Ruling DMK-backed Congress nominee EVKS Elangovan won in the Erode East byelection, with Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin terming it a public endorsement of the “Dravidian model of governance” of his 22-month-old government.
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