Assembly bypoll result: TMC wrests Sabang from Congress, defeats nearest rival CPI(M)

Sidelined AIADMK leader TTV Dhinakaran won the crucial RK Nagar bypoll by a thumping margin of over 40,000 votes on Sunday.

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Kolkata: Trinamool Congress (TMC) wrested the Sabang Assembly in West Bengal from the Congress on Sunday by defeating its nearest rival, the CPI(M).

While TMC candidate Gita Rani Bhunia secured 1,06,179 votes, Rita Mandal of the CPI(M), bagged 41,987 votes.

Antara Bhattacharya of the BJP bagged 37,476 votes and the Congress' Chiranjib Bhowmick secured 18,060 votes, West Midnapore District Magistrate (DM) Jagdish Prasad Meena said.

The bypoll was necessitated after former Congress MLA Manas Bhunia defected to the TMC earlier in 2017 and became a Rajya Sabha MP.

TMC candidate Gita Rani is the wife of Bhunia. She has won by an even better margin than her husband's in the 2016 Assembly election. Bhuniya, who had fought the Assembly polls as an alliance candidate of the Congress and CPI(M)-led Left Front, had won the seat by a margin of over 50,000 votes.

The BJP increased its vote share, securing nearly 18 percent of the total votes polled. The biggest jolt was to the Congress, which not only lost one of its citadels to the TMC but also finished a distant fourth in the bypoll. Sabang has been a Congress stronghold since 1957.

Meanwhile, in Uttar Pradesh, the BJP retained the Sikandra Assembly seat in a bypoll in Kanpur Dehat district by a margin of over 11,000 votes.

According to the Uttar Pradesh chief electoral officer's office, BJP's Ajit Singh Pal secured 73,284 votes (44.86 percent), while his nearest rival, Seema Sachan of the Samajwadi Party (SP), bagged 61,423 votes (37.60 percent). The victory margin of the BJP candidate was 11,861 votes. Prabhakar Pandey of the Congress secured 19,084 votes.

On the other hand, in Arunachal Pradesh, where the BJP is in power, the party wrested the Pakke-Kessang and Likabali Assembly seats from the Congress.

BR Waghe of the BJP won the Pakke-Kessang seat by 475 votes, defeating his lone rival and former deputy CM, Kameng Dolo of the Congress, Chief Electoral Officer DJ Bhattacharjee said. In the Likabali, BJP's Kardo Nyigyor won by just 305 votes, defeating his nearest rival, Gumke Riba of the PPA in a multi-cornered contest.

The 60-member Arunachal Assembly now has 49 MLAs from the saffron party, nine from the Peoples' Party of Arunachal (PPA), one from Congress and one Independent.

However, the most stunning result was the victory of sidelined AIADMK leader TTV Dhinakaran, who won the crucial RK Nagar bypoll by a thumping margin of over 40,000 votes on Sunday.

The nephew of jailed leader VK Sasikala, trounced his nearest rival E Madhusudhanan of the ruling AIADMK by 40,707 votes in the Assembly constituency in north Chennai. This was higher than the margin of 39,495 votes secured by late Tamil Nadu CM J Jayalalithaa last year in the segment in the Assembly elections. 

The bypoll, necessitated by the death of the AIADMK supremo on December 5, 2016, was held on December 21.

(With PTI inputs)