Mamata Banerjee wins Bhawanipur bypoll with record margin of 58,000 votes

Mamata Banerjee won the Bhawanipur byelection with a record margin on Sunday with 58,832 votes. The West Bengal CM beat the BJP's Priyanka Tibrewal after 21 rounds of counting on Sunday. Her winning margin was 54,213 in 2011 and 25,301 in 2016.

Banerjee had to win this by-election to continue as the chief minister, as she did not win from the Nandigram constituency in the March-April Assembly general elections.

While the polling rate was low - only 57% of voters came to the polling stations - Banerjee had drawn more than 70% of the polled votes till the 12th round of counting, enabling her to script a victory with a satisfactory margin. She had been leading right from the first round when the postal ballots were counted. Gradually, the lead went on increasing.

In the assembly general elections, the TMC's Shobhandeb Chattopadhyay won from Bhawanipur with a margin of over 28,000 votes. He resigned to allow the party chief contest from her home turf. He is slated to contest from Khardah in North 24 Parganas district which will be held on October 30. The TMC's Khardah winner Kajal Sinha's death necessitated the byelection.