West Bengal's ruling Trinamool Congress trounced its opponents to wrest the
Noapara assembly seat from the Congress and retained the
Uluberia Lok Sabha seat on Thursday with a mammoth margin even as the BJP emerged its main challenger.
Trinamool's Sajda Ahmed routed her nearest rival Anupam Mallick of the BJP by 4,74.201 votes in Uluberia, which has a large Muslim population. S
Three years back, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had managed only 11.55 per cent of the valid votes in Uluberia. This time it increased its votes by more than 1.65 lakh.
Congress' Madassar Hossain Warsi was backed by a mere 23,108 voters.
In the Noapara bypoll, necessitated by the death of sitting Congress legislator Madhusudan Ghose, Trinamool's Sunil Singh won by more than 63,018 votes over his nearest rival Sandip Banerjee of the BJP.
Singh could woo 1,01,729 of the voters, while Banerjee obtained 38,711 votes.
CPI-M candidate Gargi Chatterjee finished a close third with 35,497 votes, after running second in the initial rounds of counting.
Congress candidate Goutam Bose finished a distant fourth, getting the support of 10,527 electors. His party had triumphed in Noapara in 2016 assembly polls in alliance with the Left Front.
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In Rajasthan, Congress was maintaining significant lead in
Alwar and
Ajmer parliamentary seats won by the BJP in 2014, while it won the
Mandalgarh assembly seat.
In Alwar, Congress candidate Karan Singh Yadav was leading by 39,826 votes over his nearest rival Jaswant Yadav of the BJP after 15 rounds of counting.
Congress' Raghu Sharma was ahead of his nearest BJP rival Ram Swaroop Lamba by 23,882 votes.
Congress candidate Vivek Dhakad won the Mandalgarh Assembly seat defearing BJP's Shakti Singh Hada by 12,976 votes.
