Debutant Shilpi Neha Tirkey of Congress trounces BJP veteran Gangotri Kujur in Mandar bypoll by over 23,000 votes

RANCHI: Ruling Congress’s Shilpi Neha Tirkey trounced BJP’s Gangotri Kujur in the Mandar bypoll by a huge margin of 23, 517 votes, the result of which was announced on Sunday.
With Shilpi’s win, Congress retained the seat that her father Bandhu Tirkey won in the 2019 assembly election on a JVM-P (now defunct) ticket and later joined the grand old party.Bandhu was disqualified earlier this year after he was convicted in a disproportionate assets case, thereby necessitating a bypoll.
For Congress, the Mandar bypoll victory is significant as it is for the first time that the party has officially won the seat since the creation of Jharkhand in 2000.
Shilpi, who will be 30 this August, is a debutant in the political arena and she won by a greater margin than her father did last time. By the end of 21 rounds of counting, Shilpi bagged a total of 95,062 votes against Gangotri’s 71,545. In 2019, Bandhu had defeated BJP’s Deo Kumar Dhan by a margin of 23,127. In the bypoll, Dhan turned into a rebel and contested as an independent. He was later backed by AIMIM and finished a distant third with only 22,395 votes.
Talking to TOI, Shilpi, who is now the 11th female legislator to enter the current assembly, said, “This is the victory of the Mandar electorates who reposed their faith in baba (father) by making me win. The people of Mandar know that baba was framed in false cases by BJP, leading to his disqualification. Now, I am here to fight for our people and to continue the unfinished work of my father.”
She added, “In this election, two MLAs have won — one is my father who will fight for the people’s cause outside the assembly and the other is me who will take up the issues inside the assembly. The victory is also a testimony to the work of our government led by chief minister Hemant Soren.”
Mandar was the fourth bypoll since the Soren government came into power in 2019 and BJP has suffered losses in all of them.
Celebrating her daughter’s victory, Bandhu said, “People have realized the real gameplan of BJP — which is to divide and rule. BJP tried several tactics this time, too, to polarize voters and rake up communal tension but it lost. The people of Mandar have blackened the faces of BJP workers in this election by backing Congress and our government.”
Conceding defeat despite a few more rounds of counting left at the Pandra centre here, 58-year-old Gangotri, who was camping there since noon, walked up to Shilpi to congratulate her. She said, “I hope she (Shilpi) works for the people. Win and loss are part of the election but I am not going to rest. BJP will continue to fight against the ills of this government and raise issues concerning the public.”
In the evening, scenes outside the counting centre turned jubilant as supporters of Congress and the victorious candidate turned up in huge numbers to dance and sing to the tune of traditional tribal drums and other musical instruments. The jubilant crowd went on bursting crackers and distributing sweets to mark the victory. The celebrations led to long traffic snarls in the area.
At the Congress office, workers burst crackers and celebrated the win. State Congress president Rajesh Thakur said, “The voters of Mandar have shown BJP the mirror in its true sense. The verdict will further strengthen the party and the government.”