TMC wins all 6 assembly bypoll seats in Bengal including one it had never won

KOLKATA: West Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress comfortably won the six assembly seats on Saturday including the Madarihat segment that had voted the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2016 and 2021.
The November 13 bypolls were held at Sitai (SC), Madarihat (ST), Naihati, Haroa, Midnapore and Taldangra because the incumbent MLAs were elected to the Lok Sabha earlier this year. Except Madarihat, the TMC had won the other five seats in 2021 as well.
The BJP managed to secure the second position in five seats except in the Haroa assembly segment in North 24 Parganas district where the Indian Secular Front was the runner-up and the BJP candidate lost his election deposit.
In Sitai, Naihati and Haroa, the victory margin of the TMC candidates surpassed previous records.
The Congress and Left Front which contested separately were virtually wiped out with all their candidates losing their deposits.
TMC founder and chief minister Mamata Banerjee congratulated people from all religions and castes for the party’s victory in a post on X. “Your blessings will encourage us to work harder for the masses. We are common people. This is our identity. We are not landlords but protectors of people.”
BJP state unit president Sukanta Majumdar and leader of the opposition in the assembly, Suvendu Adhikari, said such results were not unexpected in bypolls and their party would sweep the 2026 state elections.
“Byelections produce such results because ruling parties get all the advantages. We will win the 2026 elections,” Majumdar said.
Former state unit president Dilip Ghosh, however, wanted the party to take a harder look at the results. “We did not do well in the Lok Sabha polls. Bypoll results are also not good. These should be reviewed by the current leadership,” Ghosh said.
“There may be differences in opinion but these are ironed out when we reach unanimous decisions,” Adhikari said, referring to criticism over the selection of candidates.
In 2021, TMC won 215 of Bengal’s 294 assembly seats and BJP wrested 75 seats. Earlier this year, TMC bagged 29 of Bengal’s 42 Lok Sabha seats while BJP’s tally came down from 18 to 12.
In the north Bengal region, where the BJP outdid TMC in the 2019 Lok Sabha and the 2021 assembly polls, TMC’s Sitai candidate Sangita Roy won by more than 130,000 votes, the highest margin in the bypolls. Her husband, Jagadish Chandra Barma Basunia, won the seat in 2021 by around 10,000 votes over his BJP rival but resigned after winning the Cooch Behar Lok Sabha polls this year.
Jay Prakash Toppo won the Madarihat seat in the tea garden area of Alipurduar district by 28,168 votes.
Between 1962, when the Madarihat constituency was formed, and 2011, when TMC came to power for the first time, the seat was won by Left Front partner Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) 12 times and once by the Congress.
BJP’s Manoj Tigga reversed the trend in back-to-back polls, winning Madarihat in 2016 and 2021.
Tigga was elected to the Lok Sabha from the Alipurduar seat in the March-April polls this year. Former union minister John Barla, who won the Alipurduar Lok Sabha seat in 2019 and had hoped the party would field him again, blamed the state unit leadership for the defeat. “We lost Madarihat because decisions are taken by leaders in Kolkata. Nobody keeps track of ground reality,” Barla said.
“I don’t want to comment on Barla’s remarks,” said Adhikari.