By Sumanta Ray Chaudhuri

Kolkata, Mar 2 (IANS): The Congress-Left Front alliance witnessed almost 28 per cent vote swing in its favour in the by-election to the Sagardighi Assembly constituency in Murshidabad district, where Congress candidate Bayron Biswas defeated Trinamool Congress' Debasish Bandopadhyay by a massive margin of 22,986 votes.

The bypoll was necessitated by the death of three-time Trinamool MLA and state minister Subrata Saha in December last year.

The vote swing in favour of the Congress-Left alliance is in comparison to Congress' vote percentage at Sagardighi in the 2021 Assembly elections.

In the bypoll, both Trinamool and BJP witnessed massive negative vote swings. While the negative swing in favour of Trinamool was around 16 per cent, it was 10.14 per cent in case of BJP.

Congress' Bayron Biswas has secured 87,667 votes, which is 47.36 per cent of the total votes polled. This is in sharp contrast to 2021, when Congress candidate S.K.M. Hasanuzzaman had secured 36,344 votes, which was just 19.45 per cent of the total votes polled.

In the bypoll, Trinamool nominee Debasish Bandopadhyay secured 64,681 votes, which is 34.94 per cent of the total votes polled. In 2021, Trinamool's winning candidate Subrata Saha had secured 95,189 votes, which was 50.95 per cent of the total votes polled.

BJP's Dilip Saha, who finished third in the bypoll, secured 25,815 votes which is 13.94 per cent of the total votes polled. In 2021, BJP candidate Mafuza Khatun, who finished second, secured 44,983 votes which was 24.08 per cent of the total votes polled.

From the above statistics, it is clear that the negative vote swing witnessed by both Trinamool and BJP this time went in favour of the Congress-Left alliance by virtue of which the Congress candidate won by a massive margin.