Left-supported Congress candidate Bayron Biswas won the Sagardighi constituency in West Bengal as per the assembly election results announced by the Election Commission of India on Thursday – ending the 13-year-old TMC regime. According to the ECI website, Biswas won by a margin of 22,986 votes against TMC candidate Debashish Banerjee.
Biswas bagged 87,667 votes with a vote share of 47.35 percent, while TMC’s Debashish got 64,681 votes with a vote share of 34.94 percent. BJP’s Dilip Saha got 25,815 votes, Moniruzzaman of the Social Democratic Party of India got 1,247 votes, and Kalimuddin SK of Indian National Socialistic Action Forces secured 740 votes.
The bye-election to the Sagardighi Assembly seat in West Bengal was necessitated following the death of Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader Subrata Saha in December 2022. The voting for the assembly seat was held on Monday, and the counting of votes began at 8 am on Thursday.
In the 2021 assembly elections, the TMC – which had been winning the seat since 2011 – had secured a margin of more than 50,000 votes.
Also read: Supreme Court’s order on Chief Election Commissioner and ECs’ selection
Congress MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury hailed Biswas’ win and hit out at the TMC, alleging that the party “acts as an agent of BJP”. “Earlier TMC has defeated Congress many times by torturing people with the help of police. As I had said Congress is not going to lose and it has been proved,” he told news agency ANI.
“TMC has betrayed Muslims and Muslims in Bengal know that TMC acts as an agent of BJP. Muslims can be cheated once but not always,” he added.