Kolkata: The Trinamool Congress (TMC) won the Asansol Lok Sabha seat and Ballygunge assembly seat in West Bengal, while the by-polls in Maharashtra and Bihar. In the bypolls, Congress and RJD won one seat each while the BJP remained empty-handed. In the Khairagarh assembly seat of Chhattisgarh’s Rajnandgaon district, ruling party Congress candidate Yashoda Verma is making a significant lead over her nearest rival Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Komal Janghel. Counting of votes is going on in this seat right now. Actor-turned-politician Shatrughan Sinha on Saturday won the Asansol Lok Sabha by-poll in West Bengal.
In West Bengal, TMC candidate Sinha defeated her nearest rival BJP’s Agnimitra Paul by a huge margin of 3,03,209 votes in Asansol. BJP MP from Asansol Lok Sabha seat Babul Supriyo had joined the Trinamool Congress in September last after tendering his resignation, necessitating a by-poll here. On the other hand, Trinamool Congress leader Babul Supriyo won the Ballygunge Assembly by-election by defeating Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) candidate Saira Shah Haleem by a margin of 20,228 votes.
Supriyo got 51,199 votes, while Haleem got 30,971 votes. Interestingly, Haleem beat 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 a decisive mandate to the party candidates. “I wholeheartedly thank the voters of Asansol Parliamentary Constituency and Ballygunge Assembly Constituency for giving a 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 by-polls.
Maharashtra’s ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance got a boost on Saturday after 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 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 COVID-19. The Congress had fielded the late MLA’s wife from this seat.
Congress’ Maharashtra unit chief Nana Patole termed the party’s victory as a “victory of progressive ideas”. The opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) candidate Amar Paswan on Saturday defeated his nearest rival and BJP’s Baby Kumari by a margin of over 35,000 votes in the by-election to the Bochahan assembly seat in Bihar, who is the ruling National Democratic Alliance in the state. It is being told as a setback for the alliance (NDA).
Paswan (33), who is contesting for the first time, 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.
