WEST BENGAL
The ruling TMC wrested the Dhupguri assembly seat in West Bengal’s Jalpaiguri district on Friday from the BJP in a by-election, officials said.
IMAGE: BJP’s Tafajjal Hossain shows the victory sign on winning the Boxanagar assembly bypoll, Sipahijala district, Tripura, September 8, 2023. Photograph: ANI Photo
TMC candidate Nirmal Chandra Roy, a college professor, won the seat by over 4,000 votes. His nearest rival was BJP’s Tapasi Roy, the widow of a CRPF jawan killed in a terrorist attack in Jammu and Kashmir in 2021, they said.
CPIM candidate Ishwar Chandra Roy, who was backed by the Congress, was at a distant third spot, they added.
TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee said the people of Dhupguri embraced politics of development over hatred and bigotry.
“Saluting every AITC worker for their tireless efforts in connecting with the people. We’re committed to leaving no stone unturned in ensuring Dhupguri’s all-round development,” he posted on X.
The counting was held amid tight security at the Jalpaiguri II campus of North Bengal University.
The polling for the by-election was held on September 5. A voter turnout of 78 per cent was recorded.
The bypoll was necessitated by the death of BJP MLA Bishnu Pada Ray on July 25.
UTTARAKHAND
The ruling BJP on Friday retained the Bageshwar assembly seat in Uttarakhand, with its candidate Parwati Dass defeating the Congress’s Basant Kumar by more than 2,400 votes in a closely contested bypoll.
Dass got 33,247 votes while Kumar polled 30,842 votes, Bageshwar district magistrate and returning officer Anuradha Pal said.
The BJP won by 2,405 votes, she said.
The three other candidates in the fray — Uttarakhand Kranti Dal’s Arjun Kumar Dev, Samajwadi Party’s Bhagwati Prasad and Uttarakhand Parivartan Party’s Bhagwat Kohli — lost their deposits getting 857, 637 and 268 votes, respectively.
The bypoll was held on September 5 with 55.44 per cent of the nearly 1.2 lakh voters exercising their franchise.
Parwati Dass, who won the seat on Friday, is wife of the late Chandan Ram Dass whose death in April this year had necessitated the bypoll.
Chandan Dass, who was a cabinet minister, had been winning the seat consecutively since 2007.
The victory of Parwati Dass comes as a big morale booster for the BJP ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections in which the party faces the challenge of retaining all the five parliamentary seats in the state for a consecutive third term.
Celebrations began in the BJP camp as the news of the party’s win from the seat broke with Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, Uttarakhand BJP president Mahendra Bhatt and Haridwar MLA Madan Kaushik offering sweets to each other.
Dhami thanked the people of Bageshwar for reposing their trust once again in the BJP.
“The bypoll verdict in Bageshwar is a tribute to our late MLA Chandan Ram Dass who worked tirelessly for the development of the constituency. His wife will carry forward his unfinished work,” he said.
“It is also a stamp of approval by the people on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership and the development-oriented programmes and policies of the state government,” he said.
This is the fifth time in a row that the BJP has bagged the seat.
KERALA
The Opposition Congress-UDF on Friday retained the Puthuppally assembly constituency in Kerala as its candidate Chandy Oommen won by a margin of over 36,000 votes in the bypoll, Election Commission sources said.
The outcome of the election was a victory against LDF misrule and 100 per cent political victory for Congress, the party said in its response to Oommen’s win.
While Oommen, son of late Congress stalwart Oommen Chandy, gained a clear edge since the initial round, his nearest rival and ruling LDF candidate Jaick C Thomas could never gain a lead in any rounds.
The CPI-M-led LDF lost ground even in its stronghold areas, and BJP candidate Lijin Lal was nowhere in the picture when the counting was over.
Chandy Oommen (37), currently chairman of the Youth Congress’s national outreach cell, could well surpass his father’s record of margin of 33,255 votes in the constituency, which the late Congress leader represented in the state assembly for over five decades.
The bypoll result, which came a few months ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, is seen as a huge setback for the ruling CPI-M, which has been facing allegations of corruption and nepotism from the opposition Congress-led UDF and the BJP.
The bypoll was held following the death of Oommen Chandy. The election was conducted on September 5.
JHARKHAND
JMM candidate Bebi Devi won the by-election to the Dumri assembly seat in Jharkhand’s Giridih district on Friday by defeating AJSU party nominee Yashoda Devi by 17,153 votes, an election official said.
The JMM candidate, who is also the INDIA bloc nominee, got about 1,00,317 votes while NDA candidate Yashoda Devi got about 83,164 votes after the counting of 24 rounds of votes, the official said.
Giridih deputy commissioner-cum-district election officer Naman Priyesh Lakra told PTI, “The counting of votes passed off peacefully. JMM’s Bebi Devi won the election with a margin of 17,153 votes.”
Bebi Devi is the wife former Jharkhand minister Jagarnath Mahto, whose death in April necessitated the by-election.
She termed her victory as a ‘true tribute’ to Mahto who had represented the seat since 2004.
The polling for the by-election was held on September 5. Of the total 2.98 lakh eligible voters, 64.84 per cent had cast their votes.
TRIPURA
The Bharatiya Janata Party has won the by-elections to the Dhanpur and Boxanagar assembly seats in Tripura’s Sepahijala district on Friday, according to the Election Commission.
BJP’s Tafajjal Hossain won the Boxanagar seat, which has around 66 per cent minority voters, by 30,237 votes. Hossain got 34,146 votes, while his nearest rival Mizan Hossain of the CPI-M got 3,909 votes.
BJP candidate Bindu Debnath bagged the Dhanpur seat, which has a significant tribal population, by 18,871 votes. Debnath got 30,017 votes, and his nearest rival Kaushik Chanda of the CPI-M got 11,146 votes.
Alleging large-scale rigging during the polling and inaction by the Election Commission, the opposition CPI-M boycotted the counting of votes. The two seats witnessed a one-on-one fight between the ruling BJP and the CPI-M, with the other two opposition parties, Tipra Motha and Congress, not fielding any candidates.
The polling for the by-elections was held on September 5. An average turnout of 86.50 per cent was recorded in the two seats. The counting was held at the Sonamura Girls’ School amid tight security.
The by-election to the Boxanagar constituency was necessitated by the death of CP-M MLA Samsul Haque. Union Minister Pratima Bhoumik’s resignation as the MLA of Dhanpur necessitated the by-election in that seat.
The BJP won the Dhanpur seat for the first time in the assembly polls held seven months ago, and retained it in the by-election. The ruling party wrested the minority-dominated Boxanagar seat from the CPI(M) in a significant victory in the bypoll.
With these victories, the BJP’s tally in the 60-member assembly increased to 33. Its ally IPFT has one MLA, while the opposition Tipra Motha has 13 MLAs, CPI-M has 10 and the Congress has three MLAs.
