BJP candidate Hasirani Rath secured a historic victory in the Nandigram Assembly bypoll, winning by a record margin of 122,753 votes and surpassing Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari’s 2016 record. Securing 1,64,427 votes, Rath won by a record margin of 1,22,753 votes, surpassing Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari’s 2016 record margin of 81,230 votes. Congress candidate Milan Pradhan, backed by Mamata Banerjee’s faction, finished a distant second with 41,674 votes in the declared final count. CPI candidate Santi Gopal Giri finished third with 5,779 votes. All India Secular Front candidate Ali Md Sabe Miraj Khan secured 1,607 votes. Ehteshmul Haque of the Ritabrata Banerjee-led Democratic Trinamool Congress received 853 votes and finished fifth
Hasirani Rath breaks Nandigram’s 2016 victory-margin record
Rath’s margin of 1,22,753 votes is the biggest in Nandigram since 1967. The earlier record was held by Suvendu Adhikari, who won the seat for the Trinamool Congress in 2016 by 81,230 votes.
The result also shows a sharp rise from the BJP’s performance in the West Bengal Assembly election in May. Adhikari had then won Nandigram with 1,27,301 votes, defeating Trinamool’s Pabitra Kar by 9,665 votes. The BJP’s vote share was 50.37 per cent. Rath’s bypoll share rose to about 75.94 per cent, a jump of 25.57 percentage.
Adhikari had contested two seats in the Assembly election. He won both Nandigram and Bhabanipur, defeating Mamata Banerjee in Bhabanipur by 15,105 votes. He later chose to keep Bhabanipur, which led to the October 6 bypoll in Nandigram.
Mamata Banerjee’s party backed Congress in Nandigram
The All India Trinamool Congress, led by Mamata Banerjee, did not field a candidate in the final Nandigram contest. Its nominee, Sanchita Pradhan Dey, withdrew before the deadline in September. Mamata Banerjee then announced support for Congress candidate Milan Pradhan to strengthen the INDIA alliance.
This left Pradhan as the main challenger to the BJP. His 41,674 votes made up about 19.25 per cent of the total. Rath polled more than three times that number.
Reacting to the result, CM Suvendu Adhikari said he had expected Rath to beat his 2016 margin. “Before the bypolls, I predicted that the victory margin for the BJP candidate this time would surpass my own record in 2016. This is what exactly happened. This would not have been possible unless our candidate had secured the majority of the minority votes in Nandigram,” he said.
Who is Hasirani Rath?
Hasirani Rath is the mother of Chandranath Rath, a former personal assistant and close aide of Adhikari. Chandranath was shot dead on May 6, two days after the West Bengal Assembly election results. The BJP fielded his mother for the Nandigram bypoll in September.
During the campaign, Rath had made increasing the BJP’s winning margin a key goal. Party leaders had also spoken of breaking Adhikari’s 2016 record of 81,230 votes. She finally crossed that mark by more than 41,000 votes.
BJP’s Shankharavh Sarkar wins Rejinagar by 75,816 votes
Meanwhile, the Bharatiya Janata Party also registered a decisive win in the Rejinagar Assembly bypoll in West Bengal’s Murshidabad district.
BJP candidate Shankharavh Sarkar secured 1,29,914 votes and defeated Aam Janata Unnayan Party nominee Golam Nabi Azad by a margin of 75,816 votes. Azad finished second with 54,098 votes, according to the final figures released by the Election Commission. The BJP polled around 63.14 per cent of the total votes counted in the constituency.
