CPI(M)’s Sabina Yasmin, who refused to campaign on daughter’s death, comes in a distant 3rd in Kaliganj

A TMC win signals that anti-incumbency has not significantly dented its support in the Nadia constituency.

CPI(M) candidate Sabina Yasmin while campaigning ahead of West Bengal elections | Photo: X/CPI(M)

New Delhi: Sabina Yasmin, the mother of a 10-year-old girl killed in a bomb allegedly hurled by Trinamool Congress supporters as they celebrated a 2025 by-poll win, lost to TMC’s Alifa Ahmed in Nadia’s Kaliganj, results for West Bengal assembly elections released Monday showed.

Alifa Ahmed secured 89,292 votes, Election Commission of India data showed. Her closest rival was BJP’s Bapan Ghosh, who secured 79,120 votes.

Contesting on a CPI(M) ticket, Yasmin was a distant third, with 22,806 votes.

Tamanna (10) died after TMC supporters, believed to have been drunk at the time, threw a bomb while celebrating Alifa Ahmed’s victory in the Kaliganj by-poll last year. The bomb hit the 10-year-old girl, who succumbed to the injuries.

Yasmin, while campaigning ahead of the April election, went village-to-village but deliberately kept her daughter’s death off the poll agenda. She said she did not “seek sympathy” for her daughter’s death; instead chose to highlight the deteriorating condition of local hospitals, the closure of industries, and the exodus of workers from the state.

Ahmed, the incumbent MLA, is a former IT professional who had left her job and entered politics after her father—then the Kaliganj MLA—died of a cardiac arrest. She had polled twice as many votes as the BJP candidate.

A road show and public interaction programme were carried out by Polit Bureau member and @CPIM_WESTBENGAL State Secretary @salimdotcomrade and State Committee member Shatarup Ghosh in support of the Left Front-nominated CPI(M) candidate for Kaligunj Assembly Constituency, Sabina… pic.twitter.com/zivbxsKqMw

— CPI (M) (@cpimspeak) April 28, 2026

Ahmed emphasised the TMC’s development record in the constituency and promised continuity. She distanced herself from Tamanna’s death, calling it “unfortunate” but maintaining that the TMC government had already taken action.

BJP candidate Ghosh, a party worker, campaigned primarily on law and order and healthcare access, citing Tamanna’s killing as evidence of TMC hooliganism.

Kaliganj has a fractured polling history. The Trinamool Congress wrested the seat from the Left Front-affiliated Revolutionary Socialist Party in its sweeping 2011 victory, only to lose it to the Congress in 2016 by a margin of roughly 1,000 votes. The party recovered it in 2021, trouncing the BJP that year, in a result that was a bright spot for TMC amid rising saffron support across West Bengal.