Six Assembly constituencies in Bengal to go for bypolls on Nov 13

Kolkata: A total of six Assembly constituencies in West Bengal will be going for bypolls on November 13, and the counting will be held on November 23, the Election Commission announced on Tuesday.

These six constituencies are Sitai in Cooch Behar district, Madarihat in Alipurduar district, Naihati and Haroa in North 24 Parganas, Medinipur in West Midnapore district, and Taldangra in Bankura district.

All these six constituencies fell vacant as the sitting MLAs were elected to the Lok Sabha elections earlier this year. Barring Madarihat, which was with the BJP, the Trinamool Congress had won the remaining five in the 2021 West Bengal assembly polls.

Manoj Tigga, the former BJP legislator from Madarihat and also the former chief whip of BJP in the West Bengal assembly, is currently the party Lok Sabha member from the Alipurduar constituency. Similarly, Trinamool's former Sitai legislator Jagadish Chandra Barma Basunia is currently the party’s Lok Sabha member from Cooch Behar constituency. Erstwhile legislator from Naihati and former state minister Partha Bhowmik is currently the MP from Barrackpore while Haroa legislator, Haji Nurul Islam got elected from Basirhat Lok Sabha as the party candidate in the general elections this year. However, he expired last month.

Similarly, actress-turned-politician June Malia who was elected as the Trinamool candidate from the Medinipur assembly constituency in 2021, won the election for the Medinipur Lok Sabha seat and Taldangra legislator Arup Chakraborty got elected from the Bankura Lok Sabha constituency.

The bypolls are extremely crucial for both Trinamool Congress and BJP, considering that they will be conducted against the backdrop of the boiling situation in West Bengal amid the ghastly rape and murder of a lady junior doctor of R.G. Kar Medical College & Hospital in Kolkata within the hospital premises in August this year.