SAGARDIGHI: The Trinamool Congress (TMC) received a jolt after it failed to retain the Sagardighi Assembly constituency, which the party had bagged for three straight terms, and was defeated by Congress' Bayron Biswas backed by the Left Front with a margin of 22,986 votes.
The victory is said to be significant as the Assembly constituency is dominated by more than 59 per cent of minority electorates, considered as TMC’s vote bank.
Referring to the Sagardighi by-election result, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said, "The alliance between Congress and Left Front was an immoral alliance. I condemn it. The result is a reflection of the exchange of votes between the alliance and the BJP. In 2021, the LF-Congress alliance’s votes shifted to BJP’s fold and this time, the same set of electorates reversed."
Ruling out the possibility of joining the alliance with the Congress and Left Front in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the Bengal CM said, "We have taken a lesson from the result of the by-election. The TMC is strong enough to fight against the BJP alone."
The Left Front and the Congress had failed to send a single elected representative in the House of 294 legislators in the 2021 Assembly elections.
With the victory in Sagardighi, Bayron Biswas, a local beedi baron, will be Congress’s only MLA in the West Bengal Assembly.
State Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said the result was a message against those who termed Congress as a party of the past. "We have proved that the TMC is not invincible. The people in Sagardighi realized Congress—Left Front alliance is the only police political force that can defeat the TMC. The result will deliver a message for the next elections scheduled to be held in Bengal," he said.
CPI(M) politburo member Mohammad Selim said the by-election result was against BJP’s divisive politics and TMC’s corruption. "People want freedom from the corruption of the ruling party and the result is its reflection,’’ he said.
However, a senior TMC leader said that the Congress and CPI(M) were wiped out in the 2021 Assembly polls because of the BJP’s politics of polarisation on the lines of religion. "The Congress returned empty hands in its Murshidabad and Malda strongholds because its loyal minority voters voted for the TMC to resist BJP’s aggression. As during the 2021 Assembly elections, the BJP had staged a poor show, the minority vote bank decided to maintain their allegiance to its old loyal party Congress," the leader said.
Factbox
TMC: 50.95%
BJP: 24.08%
Congress-LF: 19.45%
Victory Margin: 50,206 votes
Congress-LF: 47.45% (+28%)
TMC: 34.94% (-16.01%)
BJP: 13.94% (-10.14%)