Firoza Bibi, whose son was killed in shooting by police and CPM cadres on March 14, 2008, defeated Paramananda Bharati of the CPI, giving the seat to Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress which has been fighting a bloody political battle with the Marxists in Nandigram.

The Trinamool had earlier handed the CPM a comprehensive defeat in the May 2008 panchayat polls in Nandigram.

The Leftists suffered a second defeat in Sujapur, Malda. In the pocket borough of the late Congress leader A B A Ghani Khan Chowdhury, his niece Mausam Benazir Noor, a 27-year-old law graduate, defeated the CPM’s Haji Ketabuddin by over 21,000 votes.

The Trinamool did not have a candidate in Sujapur, and the Congress didn’t put up one in Nandigram.

The CPM retained the Para assembly seat in Maoist-dominated Purulia district.

Banerjee described the Nandigram result as a verdict for “Ma, Mati o Manush” (mother, soil and humanity). “It is time the CPM learnt a lesson from this defeat. People in Nandigram have voted against atrocities in the name of governance and Nandigram will show the way to the rest of Bengal,” she said.