Ruling parties sweep bypolls in five states

The Trinamool Congress retained the Bongaon parliamentary seat and the Krishnaganj Assembly seat in the bypolls, brushing aside speculation over its political prospects, as Monday witnessed the ruling parties in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Goa and Arunachal Pradesh winning Assembly byelections.

In Tamil Nadu, the ruling AIADMK won the Srirangam Assembly seat in the vacancy caused by the unseating of Jayalalitha in a corruption case while, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) bagged the Tirupati seat in Andhra Pradesh.

The BJP won the Panaji seat and the Congress the Liromoba seat in Arunachal Pradesh.
However, the BJP, which has been trying to make inroads into West Bengal, came second in the bypoll for the Assembly seat and third in the Lok Sabha election.

The Trinamool won Bongaon in North 24 Parganas by more than two lakh votes. At Krishnaganj in Nadia, the margin was about 40,000.

At Bongaon, Trinamool candidate Mamatabala Thakur received 5,39,990 votes, substantially increasing the victory margin of 1.46 lakh in 2014, keeping ahead of the CPM’s Debesh Das by more than 2.11 lakh votes. Das received 3,28,196 votes and BJP’s Subrata Thakur got 3,14,119 votes.

The ruling AIADMK in Tamil Nadu retained the high-profile Srirangam Assembly seat in the byelection by defeating its arch rival DMK with a huge margin, the results of which were announced here on Monday.

In Andhra Pradesh, the TDP retained the Tirupati Assembly seat, but Congress candidate Rudraraju Sreedevi lost her deposit. TDP candidate and wife of former MLA M Suguna defeated R Sreedevi by a margin of 1,16,524 votes. The byelection was caused by the death of the TDP legislator M Venkatramana.

In Goa, the ruling BJP won the Panaji seat, which has been held by Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar since 1994. BJP candidate Siddharth Kuncolienkar won by a margin of 5,368 votes defeating his immediate rival and Congress nominee Surendra Furtado.
The Congress retained the Liromoba Assembly seat in Arunachal Pradesh with its candidate Nyamar Karbak defeating his BJP rival by a slender margin of 119 votes.
The byelection was necessitated by the death of former chief minister Jarbom Gamlin on November 30 last year.