Eight seats in the West Bengal Legislative Assembly saw bypolls along with the seven phases of the Lok Sabha Elections 2019. The eight seats are – Bhatpara, Darjeeling, Habibpur, Islampur, Kandi, Krishnaganj, Nowda and Uluberia Purba.
Out of the 8, the Congress won 1, the TMC bagged 3 and BJP won 4, taking the saffrom party’s total tally in the West Bengal Assembly to 7.
The Congress won Islampur in the Malda district which is known to be its bastion. The Trinamool won Kandi, Nowda and Uluberia Purba.
The two most high-profile seats in these bypolls – Bhatpara and Darjeeling – went to the BJP.
Bhatpara, which experienced massive violence on polling that continued for days after, saw a contest between the Trinamool’s Madan Mitra and the BJP’s Pawan Kumar Singh.
Mitra, who was a former Transport Minister in the Mamata Banerjee cabinet and is out on bail in the Saradha chit fund scam after serving 21 months in jail was looking to use this opportunity to get back in favour within the Trinamool Congress. On the other hand, for Pawan Kumar Singh, son of ex-TMC MLA Arjun Singh who defected to the BJP to contest Lok Sabha elections from Barrackpore, it was a prestige battle.
In the end, Singh emerged victorious by over 23,000 votes.
The Darjeeling seat on the other hand was a battle between BJP’s Neeraj Tamang Zimba and Trinamool-backed Gorkha Janmukti Morcha’s (GJM) Binay Tamang. Zimba was also backed by the other faction – or the Bimal Gurung faction – of the GJM.
Tamang lost to Zimba by about 46,000 votes as the Gorkhaland issue seems to have taken precedence in the minds of the hill people.
The other two seats that the BJP won are Habibpur in the Malda district and Krishnaganj in the Nadia district.
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