Congress suffers setback in Tehri, scrapes through in Jangipur

DEHRADUN/BERHAMPORE: The Congress today suffered a setback in the Lok Sabha by-elections when it lost the Tehri seat in Uttarakhand and barely managed to scrape through in Jangipur in West Bengal, which was held by Pranab Mukherjee, by a narrow margin.

In the prestigious Tehri seat vacated by Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna, his son and Congress candidate Saket Bahuguna lost to BJP's Mala Raj Laxmi Shah, the daughter-in-law of erstwhile Tehri royal family scion Manvendra Shah, who had represented the seat for a record eight times.

But in the other seat, Congress managed to save its face largely helped by the absence of Trinamool Congress which decided not to contest the polls despite the split between the two parties recently on the issue of FDI.

Its candidate Abjijit Mukherjee, son of President Pranab Mukherjee, won the Jangipur by-election by a narrow margin of 2,536 votes defeating his nearest CPI-M rival Muzaffar Hussain.

Abhijit polled 3,32,919 votes, while the CPI-M candidate bagged 3,30,383 votes.

The senior Mukherjee had won the seat in 2009 by a huge margin of over 1.28 lakh votes under a poll alliance with Trinamool Congress.

With today's results, the strength of Congress comes down to 206 in a House of 545 while that of BJP goes up to 115.