Ruling Trinamool Congress won the bypoll to the Noapara assembly constituency and was leading in Uluberia Lok Sabha seat around 11 am when Union finance minister Arun Jaitley began his budget speech in Parliament.
Trinamool candidate, Sunil Singh won by a margin of 63,018 votes in Noapara. He won 1,01,729 votes that was well over the 50% mark.
The BJP candidate came second with 38,711 votes, while CPI(M) won 35,497 and Congress 10,527 votes.
Early counting indicated that Trinamool candidate was leading by 68,503 votes in Uluberia Lok Sabha seat where counting was on. BJP was in the second and CPI(M) in the third position.
“I expected to win by a bigger margin,” Sunil Singh said.
The bypoll results provide indications of the popularity of the political parties before rural polls are held across the state soon. The rural polls will be a sort of dress-rehearsal for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, for which BJP president Amit Shah wants to secure at least half of the 44 seats that Bengal offers.
The bypolls will fuel an intense debate on the recent decision of the CPI(M) central committee not to ally with Congress as the results show the two parties, in alliance, could have come second in Noapara.
In the 2016 Assembly polls, when there was an understanding between the Left and Congress, the ‘alliance’ candidate Madhusudan Ghose defeated Trinamool Congress by a narrow margin of 1,005 votes.
In the 2009 elections TMC’s Sultan Ahmed won the Uluberia seat by a margin of 98,936 votes. In 2014, his winning gap increased to 2.01 lakh.
In 2011, TMC candidate Manju Bose won the Noapara Assembly constituency. Five years later, the seat was wrested by Madhusudan Ghose of Congress with support from the Left.
The death of Ahmed and Ghose necessitated the bypolls.
Source: HindustanTimes