The Left Front’s downturn in West Bengal continues. The Trinamool Congress registered a landslide win in bypolls to two assembly seats — Sealdah and Bowbazar.
The bypolls in these two seats was necessitated after West Bengal assembly speaker Hasim Abdul Halim disqualified Somen Mitra and Sudip Bandopadhyay, former Congress MLAs from these seats, under the anti-deflection law after they joined the Trinamool.
Later, Mitra and Bandopadhyay got elected to Lok Sabha on a Trinamool ticket. In the bypolls, Trinamool fielded Mitra’s wife, Sikha Mitra, from Sealdah and Swarna Kamal Saha from Bowbazar. Sikha defeated CPI candidate Probir Dey by 15,927 votes. In Bowbazar, Saha defeated LF-supported independent candidate Minati Gomes by 21,577 votes.
The Trinamool’s victory margin was significant, considering that the turnout was around 40%. The apparent split in Congress-Trinamool ties over seat-sharing, too, had put the spotlight on these elections. While the Congress wanted to settle for a 1:1 formula, Mamata was adamant on fielding candidates from both seats.
After a lot of deliberations, the Congress finally succumbed to Trinamool pressure by withdrawing candidates from these seats. But agitated Congress leaders expressed their displeasure to the AICC high command for bowing to the Trinamool’s pressure tactics.
