Kolkata: Amid the big ticket poll outcomes for the Maharashtra and Jharkhand Assemblies as well as the Wayanad Lok Sabha bypolls where Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is trying her electoral luck, West Bengal will also have its share.
Results for six Assembly bypolls, two seats each in north, west and south Bengal will be known by the afternoon of November 23. It is not that the ruling Trinamool Congress will be eagerly waiting to know the outcome as bypoll results seldom have the capability to usher in a change at the hustings. On the other hand, it will be a scope for the opposition BJP, Left and the Congress to test waters as they gradually gear up for the big game in 2026 – the state Assembly elections.
For Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress, the Assembly seat of Madarihat in north Bengal is the only prize that the party is eyeing for. The reason behind it is, Madarihat is the only seat in north Bengal where Trinamool has never tasted victory. Before 2011 when Mamata or her alma mater the Congress were in the opposition, Left Front constituent RSP kept winning from this tea garden dominated seat.
This continued till 2016, even after Mamata and her Trinamool Congress had trounced the Left from Bengal. But, in 2016 also Madarihat turned back on Mamata and voted for the BJP. The saffron party’s winning streak continued in 2021 Assembly elections and BJP candidates managed good leads from this segment in the 2019 and 2024 Lok Sabha elections. During the general elections earlier this year, Trinamool Congress has fared reasonably well in north Bengal and Mamata Banerjee can surely hope for a breakthrough in Madarihat, in her favour when the votes are counted.
Among the two south Bengal seats of Haroa and Naihati, Trinamool Congress has a distinct edge. The organisational presence of the party was noticeable during the general elections earlier this year, when Haji Nurul Islam and Partha Bhowmick won on TMC tickets from Haroa and Naihati respectively.
Poll pundits had thought that the Basirhat Lok Sabha seat could be a close call to the TMC as the polls were happening in the backdrop of the multiple allegations of land grabbing, intimidation and physical abuse by Trinamool-aided goons in Sandeshkhali.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had conducted multiple campaigns in favour of BJP’s candidate Rekha Patra, only to see Haji Nurul defeating Rekha by over 3 lakh votes. Haroa is an Assembly segment within the same Basirhat Lok Sabha seat and the TMC candidate for the bypolls is Nurul’s son, Rabiul Islam. Incidentally, Rabiul’s contest this time is not against the BJP, but with the Indian Secular Front candidate.
Naihati has been a Left bastion for long, but like many such bastions; Naihati too fell to the Trinamool Congress in 2011 and has been like that since. In the last Assembly election of 2021, Partha Bhowmick of TMC won by over 18,000 votes and in the Lok Sabha polls of May this year, Naihati again gave a lead of over 15,000 votes to Partha as he was contesting the Barrackpore Lok Sabha seat. Partha defeated BJP’s Arjun Singh.
In a new twist in the tale of the Left Front unity in Bengal, CPI(ML) has come into an electoral understanding for the first time with CPIM and its allies and is contesting from the seat. This could eventually lead to a completely different political equation in the coming days in Bengal as the INDI bloc has all but collapsed in the state with the Left, the Congress and the Trinamool Congress, all contesting against each other in these bypolls.
In the two seats of Medinipur and Taldangra, it is again advantage Trinamool as there is hardly any Left presence left. In both seats, the saffron party, however, has some sway and it will be interesting to note how the two Assembly seats vote, when the EVMs are unsealed.
It will also be interesting to witness if the massive civil society protests after the RG Kar rape and murder case, that had rocked the Mamata Banerjee-government to quite an extent, have any effect on the voters in all the six Assembly constituencies. The protests had brought out thousands of people on the streets, mostly women, demanding justice for the dead victim and workplace safety for women.
Mamata and her government’s Laxmir Bhandar, a cash dole for the state’s women, has been a game changer for the Trinamool Congress over at least the past four elections – both Lok Sabha and Assembly. What is in store for Bengal’s Didi and her opposition in this bypolls, is just hours away to be revealed.
