Bypolls to the Asansol Lok Sabha seat and Ballygunge assembly seat are to be held on April 12 and the results will be declared on April 16.
Bypolls to the Asansol Lok Sabha seat and Ballygunge assembly seat are to be held on April 12 and the results will be declared on April 16.
Trinamool Congress president Mamata Banerjee on Sunday announced that former Union minister and actor Shatrughan Sinha will be the party’s candidate for the Lok Sabha bypoll from Asansol seat.
The seat fell vacant following the resignation of former Union minister Babul Supriyo, who had joined the Trinamool Congress (TMC) from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in September 2021.
Ms. Banerjee announced that Mr. Supriyo would contest from the Ballygunge seat in Kolkata. The seat fell vacant after the death of Minister and senior TMC leader Subrata Mukherjee in November 2021. Bypolls to the Asansol Lok Sabha seat and Ballygunge assembly seat are to be held on April 12 and the results will be declared on April 16.
With this announcement, the TMC leadership has given Mr. Supriyo a chance to be elected to the state assembly. Mr Supriyo had quit the BJP and joined the TMC after he was dropped from the Union Council of Ministers last year. He has been waiting for the last six months to be given a chance by the TMC.
Mr. Sinha had contested the 2019 Lok Sabha elections from Patna on a Congress ticket and lost to Ravi Shankar Prasad of the BJP. There was speculation that he would join the TMC from 2021, when the party retained power in West Bengal for the third time in a row. The announcement of his candidature marks his official association with TMC.
Asansol is a constituency in West Bengal bordering Jharkhand and has a significant “non-Bengali” population. BJP won it in 2014 and 2019 and the decision to field the popular actor from this seat has been taken keeping in view the voters of the constituency.
Former Union Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha had joined TMC in March 2021 and has been appointed as the national vice-president of the party. In its efforts to establish its footprint outside West Bengal, TMC has given Rajya Sabha berths to Sushmita Deb and Luizinho Faleiro.