Mamata Banerjee of 2021 defeated Mamata Banerjee of 2011 on Sunday.

The Election Commission declared the Bengal chief minister victorious by a margin of 58,835 votes in the Bhowanipore Assembly seat. The margin broke the constituency’s previous record of 54,213 votes set by Mamata herself in a 2011 bypoll.

Mamata’s victory was widely deemed a foregone conclusion, and a prestigious margin was her party’s chief goal.

Although only 1.18 lakh votes (57.09 per cent) were cast, the Trinamul Congress chief bagged 85,263 votes or 71.9 per cent of the votes polled. In the April 26 election — when the turnout was 61.79 per cent — Trinamul’s Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay had secured 73,505 votes or 57.7 per cent of the vote share.

On Sunday, for the first time since 2014, the Trinamul candidate led in each of the eight Calcutta Municipal Corporation wards in the Assembly seat.

Around 2.30pm, shortly after formally being declared the winner from Bhowanipore, Mamata stepped out of her residence with several members of her family to greet supporters gathered there.

Thanking the electorate, her party colleagues and the people of not only Bengal but also all of India, the chief minister pointed out that the margin was a landmark despite the low turnout.

“My heart is full today because the people of Bhowanipore showed them (the BJP). All of Bengal was watching Bhowanipore,” Mamata said.

“All of Bengal was very hurt when, although we swept the state, we lost in Nandigram. That matter is sub judice. A lot of conspiracies there…. I will not say anything more on that now,” she said.

Sworn in as chief minister for the third consecutive term on May 5, Mamata had till November 5 to be elected to the 294-seat House. She had unsuccessfully contested from the Nandigram seat, losing by 1,956 votes to Trinamul turncoat Suvendu Adhikari, now in the BJP. She has challenged the result in court.

Trinamul Congress supporters in Dhanbad celebrate after Mamata Banerjee’s victory in the Bhowanipore byelection on Sunday. Shabbir Hussain

Underscoring how she broke her own record, Mamata said the victory in Bhowanipore was comprehensive, having won leads in all the eight wards — 63, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 77 and 82 — that make up the diverse constituency spread over a part of Chowringhee in the north to Kalighat in the south.

“Each and every ward in this very cosmopolitan constituency, we won… in a first (since the Lok Sabha election of 2014). It was a challenge for us,” she said.

After delimitation resurrected the constituency in 2009, Mamata had secured leads from all eight wards in the Lok Sabha polls that year as the candidate of Calcutta South. In the civic polls a year later, her party won all the wards. In the Assembly election of 2011 and the bypoll she contested that same year, Trinamul had got leads from every ward.

However, in the Lok Sabha polls of 2014, the BJP’s Calcutta South candidate led from 63 (parts of Chowringhee, Taltala, Park Street, Shakespeare Sarani, the Maidan and Hastings), 70 (Jadu Babu’s Bazaar), 71 (Bhowanipore), 72 (Chakraberia, Padmapukur and Bakulbagan) and 74 (Alipore). In fact, the BJP’s Tathagata Roy led the Bhowanipore Assembly segment by 176 votes that summer.

In the civic polls of 2015, the BJP’s Ashim Bose won from ward 70, only to defect to Trinamul shortly after. In the 2016 Assembly polls, the BJP led from Ward 70, again.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Trinamul trailed the BJP in six wards, barring 77 (Kidderpore) and 82 (Chetla).

Despite considerable recovery in 2021, Trinamul’s Chattopadhyay — who vacated the seat for Mamata in May — trailed the BJP’s Rudranil Ghosh in the April election in wards 70 and 74, prompting Mamata to assign trusted lieutenants Subrata Bakshi and Firhad Hakim to personally oversee campaign in the two.

“Our initial estimates suggest leads between 1,500 and 22,000 in all eight wards. Ward 70 gave us a lead of 1,700-odd, and ward 74, a lead of around 1,500. That’s as good as it gets,” said a Trinamul ward coordinator from the south of the city.

That Mamata too considers this momentous was clear from her brief speech.

“Even in 2016, I got relatively fewer votes in one of the wards. But this time, not one. Not a single one. This must be remembered,” she said.

“Bhowanipore has 46 per cent non-Bengalis. There are Bengalis, Punjabis, Gujaratis, Biharis, Marathis, Odiyas, Marwaris, people from Uttar Pradesh,” she added. Bhowanipore, a socio-economically diverse constituency with around 80 per cent non-Muslim votes, has Hindus, Sikhs and Jains in large numbers. “Everybody contributed to our victory together in peace, despite the weather.”

Mamata expressed happiness, not only for herself but also for her victorious candidates in Samserganj and Jangipur, which took the September 30 scoreline to 3-0.

“Many were asking me to flash the V sign. I will not do so. I will show the three sign instead. Because I am not selfish. Two of my colleagues are also on the verge of winning in Samserganj and Jangipur. It’s a 3-0 score for us. Ek, dui, tin… Ma, Mati, Manush ke dhonyobad din (One, two, three… thank the mothers, the soil and the people),” she said, holding up three fingers of her right hand for the cameras.

“We will win the other four too,” she asserted with confidence, referring to the scheduled bypolls in four seats on October 30.

Mamata thanked the poll panel for having the by-elections conducted within the six-month window.

“I am grateful to the Election Commission of India for doing the right thing, getting the bypolls conducted within the stipulated six-month window…. The entire central government had conspired to have us removed (in the summer election),” she said.

“I will forever be indebted to the people of Bhowanipore,” Mamata said, adding that she has forbidden victory rallies by her party, asking everyone to celebrate by helping out the flood-affected.

Bypoll nominees

Trinamul will field for the October 30 bypolls Udayan Guha in Dinhata, Brajakishore Goswami in Santipur, agriculture minister Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay in Khardah and Subrata Mondal in Gosaba.

Mamata said her party would appeal to the poll panel against allowing any outdoor campaign by any party from October 10 to 20 in view of Durga Puja.