Udayan Guha of the Trinamool Congress says he stands vindicated. Before suffering the narrowest loss in the 2021 West Bengal assembly elections by just 57 votes, he says, he kept telling the voters of Dinhata in Cooch Behar that BJP candidate Nisith Pramanik wouldn’t remain their MLA for long even if he won.
Guha was proved right on Wednesday as Pramanik resigned as an MLA within ten days of winning the seat, choosing instead to remain the MP from Cooch Behar. Another Lok Sabha lawmaker of the BJP, Jagannath Sarkar, chose the same route as he resigned from his MLA seat of Santipur. The BJP’s seat tally in the state assembly, hence, came down from 77 to 75 and bypolls will now have to be conducted on both seats.
“BJP will remain at 75 seats and will lose both these bypolls. People have been defrauded by both these MPs. Why did they contest an MLA election if they never wanted to serve as MLAs? Everyone’s time has been wasted and the people will teach the BJP a lesson. TMC will win the Dinhata seat by at least 50,000 votes now,” Guha told News18 on phone. Guha represented Dinhata for a decade as the MLA before losing to Pramanik this time.