The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) may have suffered a setback in the by-elections throughout the country, but it has done remarkably well in West Bengal.
In topsy-turvy counting in Bengal, where trends changed with every round, the BJP has finally managed to win Basirhat Dakshin by a close margin. Nayana Bandyopadhyay of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) won the Chowringhee seat, and the BJP came second. With this win, the BJP opens its account in the 294-seat state Assembly. It had managed to win a seat in the Assembly only once before.
The BJP's Samik Bhattacharya defeated football player Dipendu Biswas of the Trinamool Congress in Basirhat Dakhin seat by a slender margin of 1,742 votes. The seat was won by the CPI(M)'s Narayan Mukhopadhyay in 2011. The by-election had to be held after his death. The TMC candidate was winning up until the 10th round, though his margin kept gradually decreasing. But finally Bhattacharya managed to pip him to the post in the very last round of counting. In the Lok Sabha elections as well, the BJP was leading in this assembly segment. The TMC candidate took the lead in the rural areas of the constituency but the BJP managed to wipe out the deficit by a strong performance in the urban pockets.
Santosh Pathak of the Congress was initially leading over Nayana Bandyopadhyay of the Trinamool Congress in Chowringhee seat by 2,000 votes. But Nayana Bandyopadhyay, the wife of Sudip Bandyopadhyay, who is the leader of the Trinamool Congress parliamentary party, gradually started to fare well as counting continued. Finally the actress-turned-politician coasted to victory comfortably by winning with a margin of 14,344 votes.
BJP state secretary and spokesman Ritesh Tiwary ended in the second position in the Chowringhee seat. The seat was won by Sikha Mitra of Trinamool Congress in the 2011 Assembly elections. The by-election was held as the seat fell vacant after Mitra's resignation from the TMC. In the Lok Sabha elections, the Congress was leading in the Chowringhee Assembly segment. The seat was a prestige fight for the TMC as losing a constituency located in the heart of Kolkata could have seriously dented the credibility of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
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