West Bengal bypolls: Trinamool vs BJP on 4 assembly seats on July 10; Mamata Banerjee eyes clean sweep

The Trinamool Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party will once again go head-to-head as the voting for the West Bengal bypolls will take place on Wednesday, July 10. Bypolls are being conducted in four assembly seats in West Bengal, and the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress is eyeing a landslide victory, a month after Lok Sabha election 2024 results were declared.

The West Bengal BJP is fighting against the TMC on all four assembly seats - Maniktala, Raiganj, Ranaghat Dakshin and Bagdah. In 2021 assembly polls, the BJP won three out of the four seats, but the MLAs later defected to the ruling TMC. Meanwhile, Maniktala MLA, TMC's Sadhan Pande, passed away in 2022 which necessitated the bypolls for the seat.

Three of the four constituencies - Maniktala in Kolkata, Ranaghat Dakshin and Bagdah in North 24 Parganas - are in south Bengal. The Trinamool Congress nominated Supti Pandey, wife of the late party leader, from the Maniktala seat.

Krishna Kalyani from Raiganj, Biswajit Das from Bagdah and Mukut Mani Adhikari from Ranaghat Dakshin resigned from their positions to contest the Lok Sabha elections, switching from the BJP to the TMC, leading to the bypolls.

Kalyani, who lost to BJP's Kartik Chandra Paul in the Lok Sabha polls, is now in the fray again from Raiganj. Adhikari, who lost to BJP’s Jagannath Sarkar from the Ranaghat Lok Sabha seat, is contesting again from the Ranaghat Dakshin assembly segment.

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The Trinamool Congress has fielded Madhuparna Takur, a member of the Matua Thakurbari and daughter of its Rajya Sabha MP Mamatabala Thakur from the Bagdah seat, which is a Matua-majority constituency.

The BJP has fielded All India Football Federation president Kalyan Chaubey from Maniktala, Manoj Kumar Biswas from Ranaghat Dakshin, Binay Kumar Biswas from Bagdah and Manas Kumar Ghosh from Raiganj. Chaubey had unsuccessfully contested the Maniktala constituency in 2021.

The TMC is in hopes to win all four assembly seats in the bypolls, riding on its sucess in the Lok Sabha elections where it won 29 out of the total 42 seats. BJP, on the other hand, secured only 12 parliamentary seats in the state.

Despite its dismal performance in the Lok Sabha polls, where it was reduced to 12 seats from18 that it had won in 2019, the BJP is hopeful of retaining Bagdah, Ranaghat Dakshin, and Raiganj constituencies, citing significant leads in these assembly segments in the recent parliamentary polls.

(With inputs from PTI)