TMC announces candidates for Bengal Assembly bypolls

Kolkata: Trinamool Congress (TMC) on Friday announced the candidates for the July 10 by-elections to four Assembly seats in Bengal.

The party, through a press release, announced the names of the candidates. Krishna Kalyani will contest from Raiganj, Mukut Mani Adhikari from Ranaghat-Dakshin, Supti Pande from Manicktala and Madhuparna Thakur from Bagdah.

Krishna Kalyani had won from the Raiganj seat in the 2021 Assembly elections on a BJP ticket. He resigned as a member of the state Assembly before the recently concluded Parliamentary polls and was fielded as a candidate from Raiganj Lok Sabha by Trinamool Congress. He was defeated. Mukut Mani Adhikari was also elected as a BJP candidate from the Ranaghat-Dakshin Constituency in Nadia district in the 2021 Assembly election. Adhikari had also resigned as the MLA before the Lok Sabha polls after he was fielded as a candidate by the ruling party from Ranaghat Lok Sabha. Adhikari lost the Lok Sabha election. Both the Raiganj and Ranaghat Assembly segments fell vacant after Kalyani and Adhikari, both BJP MLAs, joined the Trinamool Congress and contested the Lok Sabha polls but lost.

Trinamool fielded Madhuparna Thakur, the daughter of the ruling party’s Rajya Sabha member Mamata Bala Thakur.

Madhuparna was a surprise choice for the Bagda Assembly Constituency, where the bypoll was necessitated because the erstwhile BJP MLA Biswajit Das resigned before the Lok Sabha polls. Das was fielded as a candidate by the TMC from Bangaon Lok Sabha. But he was defeated.

Instead of re-nominating Das as a candidate for Bagdah, the party chose young Madhuparna who is also the cousin sister of the two-time BJP Lok Sabha member from Bangaon and the Union minister for Ports, Shipping and Waterways Shantanu Thakur.

Supti Pande, the widow of former TMC MLA Sadhan Pande, has been fielded from Maniktala seat by the TMC.

The Maniktala seat fell vacant after the death of Sadhan Pande in 2022.Trinamool supremo Mamata Banerjee last Tuesday had given her nod as to who will be her party candidate from Manicktala.

Banerjee had held a meeting with the members of the core committee that she had formed on Monday for the selection of the candidate for Manicktala Assembly seat.

Fueled by their sweeping success in the recent Lok Sabha elections, where TMC claimed 29 out of 42 seats, with BJP securing 12 and Congress one, the ruling party in Bengal aims for another decisive victory in the upcoming by-elections.