Kolkata: Any hope of the opposition parties to dent the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in the West Bengal assembly bypolls, the first held after the RG Kar tragedy in August, went up in the smoke as results came out Saturday.
Not only did the ruling TMC retain five seats and wrest Madarihat from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), it went on to clinch the two constituencies of Sitai and Haroa by a whopping 1.30 lakh-plus margin.
In Sitai, BJP’s Dipak Ray came second to Sanhita Roy of TMC. The BJP candidate got barely 35,348 votes, as compared to 1,65,984 of his Trinamool rival. The results were equally lopsided in Haroa as Mamata’s candidate Sheikh Rabiul Islam got 1,57,072 votes while India Secular Front’s Piyarul Islam mustered only 25,684.
Apart from these two constituencies, the TMC’s victory margin also surpassed the previous record at Naihati.
Such was the Trinamool’s dominance that its lowest win margin was 28,168 votes in Madarihat, a seat that was with the BJP for the last eight years. In all these six seats, the Trinamool candidates secured above 50 percent of the total vote share.
Though the assembly bypoll results are generally tilted in favour of the ruling party, it took place in the aftermath of the rape and murder of a trainee doctor at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital that had rocked Bengal and gathered attention of the entire country.
The groundswell of protests seeking justice for the victim had gone to become a strong tide that had put TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee into a tight spot. At one point, the West Bengal chief minister had said that she was ready to resign for the “sake of Bengal”.
After the poll results showed no loss in the TMC’s fortunes, three political analysts ThePrint spoke to asserted that the outcry over RG Kar was either limited to the urban areas or a certain section of the society. Moreover, they highlighted the public welfare schemes that have firmly entrenched the TMC in Bengal.
Political analyst Snigdhendu Bhattacharya said a bigger factor behind the opposition’s poor performance in Bengal is due to the lack of organisation.
“The (RG Kar) protests itself fizzled out, but the bigger outcome of this result is that the parties like the BJP and the CPI (M) have failed to resurrect their organisation that took a blow in 2021. Since the Lok Sabha polls, the TMC has not lost a single byelection in Bengal and issues like Sandeshkhali or RG Kar have failed to be electoral factors time and again,” he asserted.
But two other political analysts Biswanath Chakraborty and Jayanta Ghoshal credited the ruling party’s bouquet of welfare schemes for the unrivalled electoral wins.
“The bond that the voter shared with the TMC is packed with welfare schemes. That’s why you see despite a heinous crime, the women have reposed faith in Mamata Banerjee. It’s a transactional gesture. The RG Kar incident also wasn’t a political issue, but a social one. The doctors didn’t let political parties join their platform. So the Opposition couldn’t cash in on the protests,” Chakraborty, a political science professor at Rabindra Bharti University, said.
Similarly, Ghoshal said that Mamata ensured that her welfare schemes guaranteed her a safety net. “The BJP and the CPI(M)’s weak performance has further helped the TMC to further secure victory. RG Kar might have had a big social media impact but on ground in rural areas or even seats that are closer to Kolkata, it had no impact,” the veteran journalist asserted.
Another pointer to the TMC’s dominance was the fact that all candidates of the Left Front and the Congress lost their security deposits for failing to get less than one-sixth of the total number of valid votes cast in their constituencies.
Riding on the high of these stunning results, the TMC will from Monday kickstart an overhaul of its organisation, beginning with changes in the lower ranks in those constituencies like Naihati and Medinipore where the party did not record a lead in the general elections held earlier this year.
At Naihati, the win margin was 49,277 votes, up from 19,000 votes in the 2021 Vidhan Sabha polls and 15,000 votes in this year’s Lok Sabha polls. Similarly, the TMC’s victory margin at Medinipore was 33,996 votes, up from over 24,000 votes in 2021 and just about 2,000 votes this year.
In a brief message on social media platform ‘X’, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee hailed the triumvirate of ‘Ma-Mati-Manush’ (mother-soil-people) for the clean sweep in the bypolls.
Her nephew and TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee congratulated the people for clipping the opposition’s wings.
“Congratulations to all six @AITCofficial candidates for their decisive victories in the WB bye elections, defying the narratives created by the ZAMINDARS, the media and a section of the Kol HC to defame Bengal for their own vested interests. A special thanks to the people of Madarihat for giving us the opportunity to serve you for the first time. I bow before the people of West Bengal for democratically dismantling the Bangla Birodhis, their fake narratives and reaffirming their trust in us (sic),” he posted on ‘X’.
BJP state president Sukanta Majumdar sought to present a brave face, saying that his party will reverse the poll outcome in 2026.
“The results of byelections and general elections don’t match. In the past, we have lost in bypolls but emerged victorious in the consecutive state and Lok Sabha elections. So in the 2026 Vidhan Sabha polls, we will defeat the TMC,” he said.
TMC leader Firhad Hakim mocked the BJP after the thumping victory. “A student who has failed in class one is dreaming of passing higher secondary. It’s a joke, when BJP seeks votes,” the state minister said.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
