TMC wins 3 out of 8 assembly by-polls in 7 states

Trinamool Congress won three of the eight assembly seats in the bypolls in seven states with Communist Party of India -Marxist and the Nationalist Congress Party retaining their seats while Congress lost in Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh in the results announced on Friday.

Trinamool retained both Bankura and Daspur seats in West Bengal defeating its nearest CPI-M candidates in the June 12 bye-elections.

Minati Mishra clinched the Bankura seat by a margin of 15,139 votes defeating her nearest CPI-M rival Nilanjan Dasgupta. Mamata Bhuniya drubbed CPI-M's Samar Mukherjee in Daspur West Midnapore by 18,919 votes.

Trinamool sprang a surprise by winning the Mat assembly seat in Uttar Pradesh with its nominee Shyam Sundar Sharma defeating RLD candidate Yogesh Nauhar. The seat was held by RLD.

Congress lost the Maheswar seat in Madhya Pradesh when its candidate Devendra Sadho was trounced by BJP's Raj Kumar mev by over 30,000 seats. Sadho's sister Vijaylakshmi had resigned from the seat after being elected to the Rajya Sabha.

In Hatia in Jharkhand, Congress candidate Sunil Sahay finished a poor fourth with AJSU candidate Navin Jaiswal defeating his nearest rival of Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (Prajatantric) Ajay Nath Shahdeo by over 11,000 votes.

In Maharashtra, NCP retained Kej with its nominee Prithviraj Sathe defeating BJP's Sangeeta Thombre by about 8,000 seats.

The ruling CPI-M in Tripura retained its hold on the Nalchar seat with Tapan Chandra Das defeating the Congress rival Dwijendralal Majumdar by 4,777 votes.

In Tamil Nadu, ruling AIADMK's Karthik Thondaiman trounced DMDK's Jahir Hussain by a margin of 71,000 votes in the bye-election to the Pudukottai assembly seat. The bypoll was boycotted by DMK. The bypoll was necessitated by the death of CPI MLA SP Muthukumaran in a road accident.

Results were today also announced for June 4 bypolls for Neyyattinkara assembly seat in Kerala with the ruling UDF dealing a blow wresting the seat held by CPI-M. Congress candidate R Selvaraj defeated CPI-M's F Lawrence by 6,334 votes.