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The juggernaut of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance, which triumphed in three of the four east and north-eastern states that went for assembly bypolls on Saturday, was halted yet again in West Bengal where Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress registered a six-on-six clean sweep.
In its process of continuing to deny the BJP its coveted foothold in the state's political theatre, the TMC retained five of the six seats it had previously won during the 2021 polls, while wresting the key Madarihat seat from the saffron camp in north Bengal's Alipurduar district, and opening its account in the segment for the first time.
The scene was much brighter for the ruling NDA in neighbouring Bihar where it swept the bypolls to four assembly segments, retaining Imamganj and wresting from the INDIA bloc Tarari, Ramgarh and Belaganj, in a shot in the arm ahead of the assembly polls due next year.
In Assam, the BJP and its allies retained four assembly seats and were leading in one, where the bypolls were held on November 13.
The sole assembly segment of Gambegre in Meghalaya was won by the ruling National People's Party nominee and chief minister's wife Mehtab Chandee Agitok Sangma, by a margin of over 4,500 votes.
The NPP is a constituent of the NDA at the Centre.
The TMC whitewash in Bengal included two of its candidates, Sangita Roy from the Sitai seat and Sk Rabiul Islam from Haroa, registering victories by margins of over one lakh votes.
The bypolls in the state were also held in Naihati, Medinipur, Taldangra, and Madarihat (ST), after sitting MLAs vacated their seats after winning the Lok Sabha elections.
These were the first set of elections in the state, held in select rural and suburban pockets, after the RG Kar hospital rape and murder incident, which took significant areas of Bengal by storm barely two months ago.
Saturday's results suggested that the anti-establishment edge in those agitations, confined largely to urban pockets, made little or no dent in the Trinamool Congress vote bank in the state's countryside, and the party romped home in continuation of its winning streak in the 2024 general elections.
In Haroa, a constituency overwhelmingly dominated by minorities, the BJP was pushed to the third position with the All India Secular Front candidate Piyarul Islam finishing a distant runner-up, behind TMC's Rabiul. The saffron candidate forfeited his poll deposit in the seat, prompting party leader Suvendu Adhikari to state: “Minorities don't vote for the BJP”.
The poll results brought no joy to either the Communist Party of India-Marxist-led Left Front, which had hoped to capitalise on the RG Kar protests to revive its fortunes, or its erstwhile ally, the Congress.
Both suffered crushing defeats in all the six segments and lost poll deposits.
In Bihar, candidates of the Jan Suraaj floated recently by former political strategist Prashant Kishor with much fanfare, lost deposits in all but one seat, in a clear indication that the fledgling party, despite claims of taking the political landscape in the state by storm, needs to cover much ground.
The biggest setback for the INDIA bloc, helmed by the Rashtriya Janata Dal, came in Belaganj, a seat the party had been winning since its inception in the 1990s, but this time lost to the JD-U headed by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, the arch-rival of its founding president Lalu Prasad.
The Janata Dal-United candidate Manorama Devi, a former MLC, defeated RJD's debutant nominee Vishwanath Kumar Singh by over 21,000 votes.
The margin of victory was greater than the 17,285 votes polled by Mohd Amjad of the Jan Suraaj, whom the RJD may have liked to blame for its defeat by causing a split in Muslim votes.
JD-U national spokesman Rajiv Ranjan Prasad said, "The people of Bihar deserve kudos for rejecting the negativity of the opposition and reposing their trust in Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. Under his leadership, the NDA will win more than 200 seats of the 243-strong assembly in 2025."
In Assam, while the BJP emerged victor in the Behali and Dholai (SC) segments and looked all set to win the Samaguri seat, its allies, the United Peoples' Party Liberal and the AGP comfortably bagged the Sidli and the Bongaiganon constituencies, respectively, humbling their nearest Congress rivals.
Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma termed the wins a testament of people's support to "good governance and development".
Maintaining that the people of Gambegre voted along expected lines, Meghalaya CM Conrad Sangma said, "Voters are intelligent. They know what is good for them and how they should vote. In this election, people voted specifically for change," he said.
“I would like to thank and congratulate the 'Maa, Mati, and Manush' from the bottom of my heart. Your blessings will help us work for the people in the coming days,” West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said on X.
TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee congratulated the candidates, claiming they had “defied the narratives created by the Zamindars, the media, and a section of the Kol HC to defame Bengal for their vested interests.”
BJP state president Sukanta Majumdar, however, downplayed the significance of the results. “Bypoll results cannot serve as a reliable indicator. Whether the people are with the TMC or against them will be reflected in the assembly elections,” he said.
With this victory, TMC's tally in the 294-member state assembly rose to 216, further consolidating its position. The BJP's tally dropped to 69, from 77 in 2021.