TMC wins Bengal bypoll

The ruling Trinamool Congress today registered an impressive victory in the Maheshtala assembly bypoll in West Bengal defeating its nearest rival BJP by a margin of 62,765 votes.

TMC candidate Dulal Das secured 1,04,818 votes as against 42,053 votes bagged by BJP's Sujit Ghosh, a senior EC official said. Left Front's Prabhat Chowdhury was third with 30,384 votes.

The victory follows the ruling party's win in the panchayat polls earlier this month.

"After complete counting of votes, the victory margin is 62765," the EC official said, adding, in the 2016 assembly polls, the winning margin was 12,452.

There was no Congress candidate in the bypoll as the party was in an electoral understanding with the Left Front for the first time since the 2016 assembly poll in the state.

The NOTA option found favour with 3742 voters of the seat, the EC official said.

The May 28 bypoll was necessitated following the death of TMC MLA Kasturi Das. Dulas Das is her husband.

An elated Mamata Banerjee said the bypolls show that people are disenchanted with the NDA government and regional parties are very strong now.

TMC secretary general Partha Chatterjee hit out at the opposition after the declaration of the result.

"When we had won in the panchayat elections, opposition parties had said that we had won because of violence during the poll. What will they say now? We have won both this bypoll and panchayat elections because of our development politics," he said.

This was the fourth bypoll in the last eight months in which TMC has garnered more than 50 per cent of the votes.

BJP state president Dilip Ghosh reacting to the bypoll result said, "Only we can fight against the misrule of the TMC. Several elections have proved that BJP is the main challenger of TMC."