- Tuesday, February 25, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
THE ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi faced yet another humiliation in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal on Tuesday (2) when results of four assembly by-elections were announced. The state’s ruling party – the Trinamool Congress (TMC) – defeated the saffron party in all four of them, two in the seats that were won by the BJP in the state elections held earlier this year.
In September, the BJP failed to stop TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee from returning as the chief minister of the state in a by-poll held in Kolkata, the state capital.
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Banerjee had lost the state elections to Suvendu Adhikari, a former TMC leader who is currently in the BJP and is serving as the leader of the opposition in the state assembly. It was necessary for her to win a by-election within six months and she did it in style.
Coming back to the bypoll results that were announced on Tuesday, Banerjee, who is preparing the base to challenge Modi in the next general elections of 2024, congratulated her party’s winning candidates on Twitter even before the counting of votes got over. She said Bengal will “always choose development and unity over propaganda and hate politics”.
My heartiest congratulations to all the four winning candidates!
This victory is people's victory, as it shows how Bengal will always choose development and unity over propaganda and hate politics. With people's blessings, we promise to continue taking Bengal to greater heights!
— Mamata Banerjee (@MamataOfficial) November 2, 2021
The BJP had in their kitty the seats of Dinhata in northern Bengal and Santipur in central Bengal after their sitting members resigned for varying reasons. The TMC snatched both the seats from the saffron camp. In Gosaba and Khardaha, the BJP failed to reciprocate and the TMC retained both. They lost the security deposit in three of the four seats.
In Gosaba, for instance, the BJP’s vote-share took a nosedive to reach less than 10 per cent from nearly 42 per cent they got in the assembly elections earlier this year.
The wins added more seats to the TMC’s record tally of 213 while the BJP, which had hoped to get more than 200 seats in the 294-seat assembly in the elections earlier this year, lost more from their tally of 70-odd, the highest ever in the history of Bengal.
