West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee won Bhabanipur assembly after she defeated her nearest rival Priyanka Tibrewal of the BJP by a margin of 58,832 votes after counting was held on Sunday. A jubilant CM and boss of Trinamool Congress (TMC) Mamata Banerjee said that voters of Bhabanipur responded to their faith and claimed that this is a reply to such people who had hatched conspiracy to defeat her from Nandigram assembly seat.
Bhabanipur is a relatively small constituency that she represented twice in 2011 and 2016. Around 1.18 lakh voters had cast their votes in this bypoll that was held on 30th September, 2021. Banerjee registered the victory by a record margin of 58,832 votes. She secured 85,263 votes against her BJP rival who got 26428 votes. In 2011, she had won this seat with a margin of over 54,000 votes.
Mamata Banerjee claimed that about 46% of the electorate of Bhabanipur is ‘non-Bengali’ who voted for her overwhelmingly. Nevertheless, during the assembly poll she had played a Bengali- non-Bengali card.
But even after such an astounding margin that Mamata Banerjee has flaunted, Priyanka Tibrewal had kept Mamata Banerjee worried throughout the by-poll.
The kind of alleged state sponsored unprecedented violence and persecution the BJP supporters and voters witnessed during the recently concluded assembly election of Bengal left a deep scar on the psyche of BJP supporters. Despite that the BJP dared challenging her despite the fact that the BJP is organizationally weak in Bhabanipur.
BJP’s Priyanka Tibrewal has alleged that Mamata Banerjee won by-poll with the help of fake voters. “People were not allowed to vote, otherwise the result would have been different. Fake voters were used to cast votes and by-poll was rigged,” she told the media. On day of voting, too, she had alleged that people were casting their votes on basis of fake voter ID.
The bypolls were conducted because Mamata Banerjee lost the Nandigram seat she was contesting from in elections held earlier this year to BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari. Adhikari, a former TMC leader was a close aide of Banerjee before he quit the party and joined the BJP. Mamata Banerjee swore in as CM even when she lost the Nandigram seat. Hence, for her to win the Bhabanipur bypolls was very crucial to hold on to her seat.
Though, the TMC legislative body unanimously elected her as chief minister but under the constitutional norms she had to become member of the house within six months of taking oath. Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay of TMC who won Bhabanipur by defeating BJP’s Rudranil Ghosh vacated this seat for Mamata Banerjee to contest the by-polls.
