West Bengal Bypoll: Trinamool Congress registers landslide victory in Nadia's Kaliganj assembly segment

KOLKATA — Trinamool Congress candidate Alifa Ahmed won the bypolls to the Kaliganj Assembly seat in West Bengal's Nadia district by a landslide margin of 50,049 votes over her nearest BJP rival Ashish Ghosh, ECI website said on Monday.

Alifa bettered the 2021 winning margin of her father Nasiruddin Ahmed, whose demise in February this year necessitated the elections to the seat.

After the final round of counting, Alifa ended up bagging 1,02,759 votes compared to BJP's Ashish Ghosh who finished the race with 52,710 votes, according to figures posted by the Commission on its website.

The Left-supported Congress candidate Kabil Uddin Shaikh came in third with 28,348 votes.

Although Alifa secured about 9,000 votes less than the 1,11,696 votes that her father had secured in 2021, her winning margin surpassed the 46,987 margin of Nasiruddin four years ago seemingly because of a tighter division of votes between her two closest challengers.

Also, the turnout of the little over 1.86 lakh electorate in the by-elections this time was considerably less than the 2.07 lakh voters who exercised their franchise during the regular elections in 2021.

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Alifa, a 38-year-old engineer, quit her corporate job at an IT firm in Kolkata to foray into politics and followed the footsteps of Mahua Moitra, the party's MP from Krishnanagar under which the Kaliganj assembly segment falls, who chose the heat and dust of her Lok Sabha constituency and Parliament floor to voice her party's political line over her previous profession as an investment banker.

Outside the counting centre, Alifa attributed her victory to "people's love" and thanked them for "reposing faith in Mamata Banerjee's development politics".

"I do not agree that Hindus have not voted for us, we received significant leads from some Hindu-majority areas in my constituency," Alifa said in response to a claim from BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari.

"We did not target votes from any particular community. We approached all voters and the results show that their clear mandate is to not tolerate any form of communal divide in Bengal," she added.

Calling the election results long before the final figures were in, TMC Supremo Mamata Banerjee congratulated the people of Kaliganj and expressed her gratitude to them.

"People of all religions, castes, races and walks of life in the area have blessed us immensely by exercising their right to vote in the by-elections to the Kaliganj Assembly constituency. I humbly express my gratitude to them. The main architects of this victory are 'Maa, Mati, and Manush'. My colleagues from Kaliganj have worked tirelessly for this. I also extend my heartfelt congratulations to them. My greetings and salutations to everyone," she said in a post on her X handle.

"Remembering the late MLA Nasiruddin Ahmed, I dedicate this victory to the motherland and people of Bengal. My greetings and salutations to everyone," she added.

The BJP, though, felt that the party had significant takeaway from the results and had not returned empty-handed.

"We have been able to reap the benefits of assimilating Hindu votes in the region. The effort has paid off since we have received an overwhelming majority of votes from Hindu-dominated areas like Palassey," said Suvendu Adhikari.

Congress candidate Kabil Uddin Sheikh pointed fingers at the BJP for what he felt about the results showing "a clear reflection of religious polarisation".

"Between Suvendu Adhikari and Sukanta Majumdar, the BJP had conducted four meetings in Kaliganj where they unambiguously called the Hindu voters to unite or else face obliteration. Faced with that call, the minorities joined forces as well and voted for the Trinamool. The BJP and the TMC ensured together that votes were divided among communal lines," Sheikh alleged.

"Voters who supported me were the neutral voters who do not support communalism. People will soon realise they cannot continue supporting such parties," he maintained.

MP Mahua Moitra also took to social media to express her delight at the poll results.

"Satyameva Jayate", she posted.