Mamata Banerjee wins Bhabanipur bypoll by landslide margin

Mamata Banerjee won Bhabanipur by poll thereby securing her third term as Chief Minister. Banerjee defeated her rival from the BJP, Priyanka Tibrewal, by a margin of over 58800 votes. The West Bengal Chief Minister had vacated her home turf, Bhabanipur, ahead of the 2021 polls in the state, to contest from Nandigram against her protégé-turned-bête noire Suvendu Adhikari. She had lost by nearly 1200 votes. Banerjee then sought a re-election from Bhabanipur where poll took place on September 30. The constituency reported a voter turnout of 57 per cent. According to the Chief Minister, she took a lead “across all wards of the Constituency”. “I thank you all. Sisters, brothers, mothers, everyone from India. In 2016, I had seen I got fewer votes from some wards. Here (in Bhabanipur) 46 per cent of the population is non-Bengali and everyone has voted for me. I am happy that the people of Bhabanipur have shown faith in me; I thank them all,” she said at a press conference post her victory. Conceding defeat, BJP’s Priyanka Tibrewal said, she “accepts the results gracefully”. “I will not go to court. But unlike the 100,000 victory margin that the Trinamool Congress claimed, their leader has won by 50000 votes. I congratulate Mamata Banerjee but people have seen the lengths she had to go to for a victory,” she said. Meanwhile in the two other seats of west Bengal - Samserganj and Jangipur - both of which went to polls on September 30, the Trinamool Congress candidates are heading towards a big win.