Shatrughan Sinha wins Asansol LS seat for TMC, BJP finishes 2nd

Asansol (WB): Actor-turned-politician Shatrughan Sinha on Saturday won the Asansol Lok Sabha by-poll for the TMC, outsmarting his nearest rival, BJP's Agnimitra Paul, by a huge margin of 3,03,209 votes.

Sinha bagged 6,56,358 votes while Paul managed to garner 3,53,149, according to Election Commission website.

CPI(M)'s Partha Mukherjee pocketed 90,412 votes and Prasenjit Puitandy of the Congress collected 15,035.

The TMC leader said he was "grateful to Asansol people and party supremo Mamata Banerjee for this victory".

Paul, on the other hand, said she "humbly accepts people's mandate". "We have to prepare for 2024 parliamentary polls taking this verdict into account," she added.

Bypoll to Asansol, held on April 12, was necessitated after Babul Supriyo resigned as the BJP MP and joined the TMC last September.

In 2019, the BJP had won the seat, with Supriyo defeating TMC's Moon Moon Sen by a margin of 1.97 lakh votes.