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How TMC regained ground in Bengal polls, phase by phase
In the 2019 polls, BJP set a record by bagging 18 seats in the state. It lost six of these to TMC on Tuesday and among the losers, two are Union ministers of state
The Lok Sabha poll results at West Bengal’s 42 constituencies show that the Trinamool Congress (TMC) has recovered a lot of the ground it lost to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) five years ago.
In the 2019 polls, BJP set a record by bagging 18 seats in the state. It lost six of these to TMC on Tuesday and among the losers, two are Union ministers of state. Also, at a number of seats that BJP managed to retain, its margin of victory plummeted.
In the north Bengal region, which stretches from Malda to Darjeeling districts, BJP secured seven of the eight seats in 2019. In the 2021 assembly polls, too, BJP bagged 29 of the 54 seats in the eight north Bengal districts although TMC won 215 of the state’s 294 seats.
Three BJP-controlled north Bengal constituencies, Cooch Behar, Alipurduar and Jalpaiguri went to the polls in the first phase on April 19 and elections at another three, Darjeeling, Raiganj and Balurghat, were held in the second phase on April 26.
Nisith Pramanik, BJP’s Cooch Behar MP and Union minister of state for home affairs, was defeated by TMC legislator Jagadish Chandra Barma Basunia in a close contest.
“We have to analyse the results carefully,” Pramanik told the local media on Tuesday.
BJP retained rest of the five seats that went to polls in the first two phases but at Balurghat, the margin of victory of the party’s state unit president Sukanta Majumdar came down from 33,293 votes in 2019 to only 10,386.
Similarly, at the Darjeeling seat that BJP has won since 2009 with help from local Gorkha parties, sitting MP Raju Bista’s margin slided from 4,13,443 votes in 2019 to 1,78,525.
The third phase of polling was held at four seats in Murshidabad and Malda districts that have Bengal’s highest Muslim populations of 66.28 % and 51.27% respectively. Both districts used to be Congress bastions till a decade ago.
Murshidabad’s Berhampore seat won by Bengal Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury five times since 1999 was however marked for the fourth phase of polling on May 13.
Indira Gandhi’s cabinet colleague late A B A Ghani Khan Chaudhury’s nephew Isha Khan Chaudhury, who retained the Malda South seat that his father won in 2019, has emerged as the sole Congress winner from Bengal because Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury was defeated by cricketer Yusuf Pathan, a Gujarat resident contesting for TMC.
“How can one dictate voters? They supported me five times. This year they didn’t,” Adhir Chowdhury said.
TMC chief Mamata Banerjee alleged during the polls that Left parties and the Bengal Congress were helping BJP by splitting Muslim votes. She cited this as her reason for not honouring the INDIA coalition in her state.
At the seven other phase-4 seats spread across the south Bengal districts of Nadia, East Burdwan, West Burdwan and Birbhum, TMC retained its control over five and wrested the Burdwan-Durgapur seat that former Union minister S S Ahluwalia won in 2019.
In Nadia and parts of East and West Burdwan, the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) enforced in March is a raging issue because of the presence of Namasudra and Dalit Matua community voters many of whom came from Bangladesh as refugees. A large section of this population supported BJP in 2019.
During her campaign, Mamata Banerjee projected CAA as a threat to both Hindus and Muslims saying it is a precursor to enforcement of National Register of Citizens (NRC) which left 1.9 million Hindus in jeopardy in BJP-ruled Assam in 2018 and the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) on which Uttarakhand passed a law in February.
Dilip Ghosh, BJP’s former state president and the 2019 MP from the Midnapore seat, his home ground, was fielded from Asansol-Durgapur located in Bengal’s biggest industrial zone. Ahluwalia somehow managed to win it by only 2,439 votes.
Ghosh, who was a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) pracharak (campaigner) before joining Bengal BJP, was helped by his former RSS colleagues amid allegations that some BJP leaders were sabotaging his campaign.
“There are conspiracies in every party. The party should prepare a report on why so many seats were lost,” Ghosh, who lost to former cricketer and TMC candidate Kirti Azad by 1,37,000 votes, said.
Ahluwalia, who was fielded from the adjacent Asansol seat, his place of birth, against actor-turned-politician Shatrughan Sinha, the sitting MP, lost as well.
“Dilip Da is a senior leader. I don’t want to comment on what he said,” Sukanta Majumdar said.
The fifth phase of polling at seven seats in North 24 Parganas, Hooghly and Howrah districts witnessed a tough contest because CAA was a prime election issue at several pockets.
TMC retained the four seats it won in 2019 and wrested the Hooghly and Barrackpore seats from BJP.
Shantanu Thakur, All India Matua Mahasangha leader and Union minister of state for shipping, is the only BJP winner from the fifth phase. He retained the Bongaon seat.
BJP’s Locket Chatterjee, who wrested the Hooghly seat in 2019, was defeated by TMC’s Rachana Banerjee, an actor and reality show host with no experience in politics.
At Barrackpore, BJP MP Arjun Singh, who left TMC before the 2019 polls but returned to the ruling party in 2022, contested again on a BJP ticket since Mamata Banerjee denied him a ticket. Minister Partha Bhowmick defeated Singh by 64,438 votes.
In 2019, BJP’s victory march in south Bengal was significant in regions having a high number of tribal voters. Because of this, the sixth phase became the most crucial one for the saffron camp.
BJP captured Jhargram, Purulia, Bankura, Bishnupur and Midnapore seats in 2019. TMC MP Sisir Adhikari and his son Dibyendu, who retained their Tamluk and Contai seats, respectively, in 2019, switched over to the saffron camp after the polls without resigning from the Lok Sabha.
Hence, on the day of polling, TMC controlled only the Ghatal seat that Bengali movie star Dipak Adhikari won for the second time in 2019. He won again on Tuesday.
Denied a ticket this year, Kunar Hembram, the BJP Lok Sabha member from Jhargram, which is reserved for STs, joined TMC on May 19. Pranat Tudu, a doctor BJP fielded against TMC’s Kalipada Soren, a Santhali writer and Padma Shri awardee, lost the election.
Although BJP managed to retain Purulia and Bishnupur, its sitting MP and Union minster of state for education Dr Subhas Sarkar was defeated at Bankura. At the Midnapore seat, which Dilip Ghosh represented, BJP MLA Agnimitra Paul was defeated by TMC MLA June Malia.
“We have no idea why Dilip Ghosh, a sitting MP, was asked to contest from Burdwan-Durgapur and why Paul, a legislator from West Burdwan district, was asked to contest from Midnapore,” a BJP state leader said on condition of anonymity.
For BJP, which started with a target of winning 30 seats, the last phase of polling at nine seats in Kolkata and two adjacent districts of South and North 24 Parganas was an acid test because it could not win any of these seats in 2019. There was no change in the scenario when the results were announced on Tuesday.
