Soon, bypolls to be held in 10 Assembly seats

Kolkata: The Lok Sabha elections have concluded, yet the political winds in Bengal are poised to stir once more, with bypolls for ten Assembly seats on the near horizon.

Five newly elected Trinamool Congress (TMC) MPs had to resign from their positions as MLAs and three TMC candidates, who had previously been BJP MLAs, were required to tender their resignations from their MLA posts before contesting the elections.

Moreover, the Maniktala Assembly seat that had no MLAs for over two years after the death of former consumer affairs minister Sadhan Pande in February 2022 due to a pending petition in the Supreme Court will also see a bypoll soon. It was learnt that the Election Commission of India (ECI) had submitted a tentative schedule to the Apex Court for holding the bypoll.

The ten Assembly seats which will soon see by-elections are Manicktala, Raigung, Ranaghat South, Bagda, Haroa, Midnapore, Sitai, Naihati, Taldangra, Madarihat.

BJP’s Manoj Tigga won the LS elections from Alipurduar, so a bypoll will now be held in Madarihat, which he represented as an MLA. Trinamool MLAs who got elected as MPs in this election were June Malia (Midnapore), Partha Bhowmick (Naihati), Jagadish Chandra Barma Basunia (Sitai), Arup Chakraborty (Taldangra) and Sk Nurul Islam (Haroa). The three BJP MLAs who contested as Trinamool candidates were Biswajit Das (Bagda), who contested from Bongaon, Krishna Kalyani (Raiganj), who contested from Raiganj and Mukut Mani Adhikari (Ranaghat South), who contested from Ranaghat. All of them lost.

Two bypolls were held in the state along with the Lok Sabha polls. The seats are Baranagar and Bhagwangola. Bypoll was held in Baranagar, as TMC MLA Tapas Roy resigned to contest as a BJP candidate from the North Kolkata LS seat and the second was in Bhagwangola where the sitting MLA Idrish Ali passed away. TMC has won both the bypolls.