Bengal bypolls: TMC takes massive leads in all four seats

Kolkata: The ruling Trinamool Congress is leading in all the four assembly constituencies in West Bengal, where by-polls were held on October 30, according to the latest update of  counting trends by the Election Commission of India (ECI).

The counting of votes to Khardah, Santipur, Gosaba and Dinhata began at 8 am amid tight security.

In  Dinhata  in the Coochbehar district, TMC's Udayan Guha was ahead of his nearest rival, BJP's Ashok Mandal, by a massive margin of 81,460 votes.

After ten rounds, Guha secured 96,537 votes, whereas Mandal bagged 15,077 votes.

After 14 rounds of counting, the TMC was ahead of its rival BJP in the Gosaba assembly segment in South 24 Parganas by a margin of  1,24,249 votes.

TMC's Subrata Mondal secured 1,41,262 votes, whereas BJP's Palash Rana, the nearest rival garnered a mere 17,013 votes.

In the



Santipur assembly constituency, TMC's Braja Kishore Goswami was leading over his nearest rival - BJP's Niranjan Biswas - by a margin of 15,548.

Goswami bagged 34,236 votes, whereas Biswas bagged 18,688 votes after the fifth round.

In the Khardah assembly segment, state minister Sovandeb Chattopadhyay was way ahead of  CPI(M) 's Debajyoti Das, who stands at number two in the counting so far.

After the sixth round, Chattopadhyay secured 36,439 votes, whereas Das bagged 8,672 votes.

The polls are being held amidst tight security. Besides imposing section 144 on a 100-metre radius of counting venues, there is a tight three-tier security layer around them, officials said.

The bypolls were necessitated as the BJP MLAs for Dinhata and Santipur resigned to retain their MP seats while the TMC legislators of Kharadah and Gosaba died.