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While Trinamool Congress(TMC) manged to retain Chowringhee seat, Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) mission to become the main political opposition in West Bengal seems to be on track with its win in Basirhat Dakhin assembly seat.
Bagging the Basirhat Dakhin by a margin of over 1500 votes, BJP's Samik Bhattacharya is all set to be the first person from the saffron party to enter current West Bengal assembly. When counting started in the morning, TMC was leading by more than 15,000 votes in Basirhat Dakshin. However, as counting entered the urban settlements, the gap started narrowing.
Incidentally, CPI-M which had won the seat in 2011, became a distant third in Barasat Dakhin and in Chowringhee the Left, which ruled the state for 35 years, was humiliated as its candidate lost his deposit.
The ruling party retained its Chowringhee seat. Party leader Sudip Bandyopadhyay's wife and former actress, Nayna Bandyopadhyay won by around 14,000 votes. Incidentally, it was BJP which become second in the seat, known to be stronghold of Congress leader Somen Mitra.In fact, only three months back during the Lok Sabha election Congress was marginally ahead of TMC in this assembly segment, while BJP was third.
The bypoll was held as the seats were left vacant after Chowranbghee MLA Shikha Mitra of Trinamool Congress, quit the party, and CPI-M MLA Narayan Mukherjee from Bairhat Dakhin, died in 2011. Commenting on the by-poll result, TMC leader Mukul Roy said, “We are happy with the outcome. We have retained the Chowringhee seat. We have done better in Basirhat Dakhin compared Lok Sabha.”When asked about BJP's rise, Roy, however, was more keen to point out that by-election in other states' show BJP has already started to losing ground.
“People is now turning to BJP to dethrone this TMC government and bypoll result is the starting point for that,” BJP state president Rahul Sinha said.BJP also said that the results showed that Saradha was an important issue in West Bengal and TMC's links with the scam had not gone down well with the people. Over the past few weeks, TMC's uneasiness had increased with the CBI stepping up its investigation in the Saradha scam. At least one party leader, Rajat Majumder, has been arrested by the CBI in the Saradha case while several people with direct and indirect links with the party are being questioned.
