Trinamool wins comfortably in Bengal Assembly by-elections
All the four seats in Bengal whose results for the assembly by-elections were announced today have been won comprehensively by Trinamool Congress, with two—Dinhata in Cooch Behar district and Gosaba in the Sundarbans region in South 24 Parganas—being won by record margins.
The Trinamool Congress has won all the four seats where elections were held in the latest round of assembly by-elections, and whose results were declared today, by comfortable margins.
Two of the seats had been won by BJP at the Assembly elections a few months back—by MPs Jagannath Sarkar and Nishith Pramanik (both now Union cabinet ministers), and who chose to retain their parliamentary seats.
On May 2, Trinamool managed to win 213 seats and BJP, 77 (in the assembly, Trinamool has the support of 214 MLAs, the other one being an independent supported by it). The numbers now stand at 219 and 70, respectively.
Two winners from BJP—Jagannath Sarkar and Nishith Pramanik—chose to retain their seats as MPs while five changed parties to join Trinamool. So the BJP’s number has come down to 70 (though the five are yet to resign or be disqualified, for all practical purposes, they are a part of Trinamool).
For the Trinamool, on the other hand, adding Jangipur and Samshergunj, which it won in the previous round of by-elections (Bhawanipur, won by Mamata Banerjee, was already in its kitty as Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay had won it, who resigned to make way for the chief minister) and the four won today, the number of assembly seats has gone up to 219.
Counting the independent, Trinamool now has the support of 220 MLAs. When the five who resigned from BJP and joined Trinamool formally become Trinamool MLAs, the number would become 225.
The four elected today from Trinamool are Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay from Khardah, Brajakishore Goswami from Santipur, Subrata Mondal from Gosaba and Udayan Guha from Dinhata, the latter two winning by record margins of 1,41,893 votes and 1,63,005 votes, respectively.
Dinhata and Santipur had been won by rather narrow margins by the two MPs—the former by just 57 votes by Nishith Pramanik and the latter by a little more than 15,000 votes by Jagannath Sarkar.
According to Trinamool Congress, the results of the by-elections today have given public validation to it and the causes it has championed, which includes issues like price rise, inflation, fuel price hike and the politics of hatred.
