FRONT PAGE | Wednesday, November 11, 2009 | Email | Print | 
Maya, Mamata make SP, CPM bite the dust
Pioneer News Service | New Delhi
Didi and Behanji reasserted their political clout in West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh as bypoll results of 30 Assembly seats and the lone Lok Sabha seat saw rout of the Left Front and major setback for the Samajwadi Party. The BJP managed to win two seats —one each in Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh, while the Congress won a total of 10 seats.
The Congress wrested the prestigious Firozabad Lok Sabha seat from the SP — with its candidate Raj Babbar scoring a convincing victory over Mulayam Singh Yadav’s daughter-in-law Dimple by 85,343 votes. The election was necessitated after the seat was vacated by her husband Akhilesh Yadav. The blow was so severe for the Samajwadi Party, as it also lost its stronghold of Etawah and Bharthana.
The party’s dismal show in Bharthana, the seat vacated by Mulayam, has put a big question mark on his hold in his home town.
The SP failed to retain any of the five seats even as the Congress and an independent won one seat each and Mayawati’s BSP walked away with nine seats. The Congress also won three seats in Kerala, two seats in Assam and one each in UP, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal.
Riding on the winds of change, the Trinamool Congress and Congress combine bagged eight of the 10 seats in the Assembly bypolls in West Bengal, handing out another humiliating defeat to the Left Front major — CPM — which drew a blank.
The Trinamool, which fielded candidates in seven seats, made a clean sweep winning all of them. The Congress, which contested three, won only one when it retained Sujapur Assembly seat in Malda. Even the Red citadel of Belgachia East in the metropolis, represented since 1977 by former Transport Minister Subhas Chakraborty, crumbled before a resurgent Trinamool Congress.
For the CPI(M)-led ruling Left Front, the Forward Bloc’s victory in the Congress stronghold of Goalpokhar was the only consolation as all other partners, including CPI(M), lost.
The CPI(M) had fielded candidates in five seats and LF partners CPI in two, RSP in one, Forward Bloc one and DSP one.
“It is a victory of democracy and peace. It is also a victory of Ma, Mati, Manush (mother, land and people),” Mamata Banerjee said. Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee declined to comment on the Left Front’s rout. “No,” Maya, Mamata make SP, CPM bite the dust Bhattacharjee shot back when reporters questioned him at the Writers’ Building about the debacle.
The by-elections brought no cheer to the BJP, which lost all the 11 seats it contested in Uttar Pradesh, including Lucknow West, which comes under Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s Lucknow Lok Sabha seat.
The party won only two seats -- Rohroo in Himachal Pradesh, wresting it from Congress, and another in Rajasthan. But it lost the lone by-election in Vaishali Nagar in BJP-ruled Chhattisgarh. The BJP yielded its Jawali seat to the Congress in Himachal Pradesh.
The by-elections were held in Uttar Pradesh (11), West Bengal (10), Kerala (3) and two each in Assam, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan besides one in Chhattisgarh.
Continuing its whitewash of the Left Front in the Lok Sabha election in Kerala, the Congress retained all the three seats, with one of the winners being a former CPI(M) MP AP Abdulla Kutty, who joined the Congress recently.
Congress candidate Bimananda Tanti defeated his AGP rival Sivacharan Sahu by 21,029 votes in Dhekiajuli Assembly constituency in Assam, which was occupied by the AGP. The Congress wrested the other seat -- South Salmara - from regional party AUDF.
In Chhattisgarh, the BJP yielded Vaishali Nagar Assembly seat in Durg district when its nominee Jageshwar Sahu Bhajan Singh was defeated by Bhajan Singh Nirankari of the Congress.
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