In a major blow to the ruling All India Trinamool Congress (AITC), the Indian National Congress (INC) won the Sagardighi constituency in the district of Murshidabad.
The Sagardighi constituency is considered a political bastion for the Mamata Bandopadhyay-led ruling party and necessitated the by-election after the AITC MLA of Sagardighi and the state minister, Subrata Saha, passed away in December 2022.
As per the Sagardighi by-election result published by the Election Commission of India (ECI), Bayron Biswas of INC defeated the Debasish Banerjee of AITC by 22,980 votes.
A debutant in the electoral contest, Biswas (backed by the Left Front) accumulated 87,667 votes (47.35%) whereas his nearest rival Banerjee accrued 64,681 votes (34.94%), after 16 rounds of counting.
Dilip Saha of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) received 25,815 votes (13.94%) and stood as a distant third.
In the 2021 West Bengal Assembly elections, the AITC’s Saha won the constituency securing 94,880 votes (50.95%), while the BJP’s Khatun Mafuja became the runner-up with 44,692 votes (24.08%). The Left Front-INC candidate SK M Hasanuzzaman became the second runner-up with 36,055 votes (19.45%).
In the Sagardighi by-poll, the AITC’s vote share fell by 16.01 percentage points, while the BJP’s vote share fell by 10.14 percentage points. The Left Front-INC alliance managed to increase its vote share by 27.9 percentage points.
Sagardighi by-poll saw about a 74% voter turnout in the election held on March 24th.
