The Trinamool Congress on Saturday won all the four Assembly seats in Bengal where by-elections were held this week, including three that voted BJP in 2021 and gave the saffron party significant leads in the last two Lok Sabha elections.

Chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who arrived in Calcutta from Mumbai in the afternoon, said Saturday’s by-election results represented a rejection of the BJP in favour of the INDIA bloc, which won 10 of the 13 seats on offer across seven states.

“The BJP has lost the by-elections across the country except in two seats in states where they are in power. They have lost everywhere, and the trend across the country is also anti-BJP,” Mamata told reporters at the airport.

“The mandate is very clear. The mandate of the people is not in favour of the NDA but in favour of the INDIA bloc.”

Mamata added: “All the parties together in the NDA collectively got 46 per cent of the votes, while the INDIA bloc constituents obtained 51 per cent of the votes.”

While by-elections in Bengal do tend to favour the ruling party, Mamata took care to explain the significance of Saturday’s victories. She underscored that Trinamool had wrested Bagda, Ranaghat Dakshin and Raiganj from the BJP besides retaining Maniktala.

“It’s four out of four. We express our gratitude to the people as this is their victory,” she said.

Trinamool won by handsome margins of 50,077, 39,048, and 33,455 votes, respectively, from Raiganj, Ranaghat Dakshin and Bagda — seats that had fallen vacant after the BJP’s sitting MLAs joined Trinamool and resigned to contest the Lok Sabha polls.

The three BJP turncoats — Bagda MLA Biswajit Das, Ranaghat Dakhin’s Mukut Mani Adhikari and Raiganj MLA Krishna Kalyani — contested the Lok Sabha polls from Bongaon, Ranaghat and Raiganj, respectively, and lost.

Trinamool re-nominated Adhikari and Kalyani from Ranaghat Dakshin and Raiganj while replacing Das with Madhuparna Thakur, daughter of Matua leader and party Rajya Sabha MP Mamatabala Thakur, in Bagda.

Supti Pande won the Maniktala seat in Calcutta by over 62,000 votes. The by-election, pending since the death of Supti’s husband Sadhan Pande in 2022, had got delayed because of a legal challenge from BJP rival Kalyan Chaubey.

In the 2021 Assembly elections, the BJP had won Raiganj, Ranaghat Dakshin and Bagda by margins of 20,748, 16,515, and 9,792.

The difference had widened in this year’s Lok Sabha polls, with the BJP garnering leads of 46,603, 36,936 and 20,614 from Ranaghat, Ranaghat Dakshin and Bagda.

The Trinamool leadership said the by-elections had proved that those who voted for the BJP in the Lok Sabha polls barely a couple of months ago had changed their mind, realising they had wasted their votes.

“Those who voted for the BJP understood their mistake after witnessing the BJP’s performance.... They didn’t want to waste their votes again and chose to vote in favour of the development agenda of Mamata Banerjee,” Trinamool leader Kunal Ghosh said.

A Trinamool insider said a section of party workers from these three Assembly seats had sat idle during the Lok Sabha polls but were activated ahead of the by-elections, and that this had made the difference.

A political scientist said Trinamool’s sweep reflected the disarray in the state BJP following the Lok Sabha results in Bengal.

“The BJP was disappointed to win only 12 seats, 6 less than the 2019 tally. Their party workers were rattled and the voters got puzzled. So, the BJP could not prepare for these by-elections,” political scientist BiswanathChakraborty said.

He, however, underscored that sections of the police and the civil administration had played a biased role.

The BJP levelled similar charges, but some in the party leadership also admitted deficiencies on their part.

“Everyone witnessed the level of terror and violence, especially in Maniktala. However, we cannot blame it only on Trinamool violence,” state BJP chief spokesperson and Rajya Sabha MP Samik Bhattacharya said.

“We must admit that we have been unable to build the electoral organisation or machinery to combat Trinamool’s terror so far.”

He added: “The result is surprising for us, at least in Bagda and Ranaghat South. We will introspect and try to find out why people didn’t come out and vote for the BJP. However, we will certainly turn things around.”

While the by-elections were an acid test for the BJP to see whether it could retain the three seats it held, the results will not have any significant impact inside the Assembly.

The BJP’s official tally in the 294-member House will drop to 66 while Trinamool’s will rise to 221.

(Additional reporting by Saibal Gupta)