Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) raced to the pole position within hours of the start of counting of votes for the West Bengal assembly on Sunday, leading in about 200 of 292 constituencies and retaining the lead through the day. The rival Bharatiya Janata Party is leading in 80 seats and there are still several rounds of counting to go.
The BJP appeared to have conceded defeat. “The TMC won because of Mamata Banerjee. It seems people have chosen Didi,” Kailash Vijayvargiya, the BJP general secretary incharge of West Bengal, said at around 3 pm, according to news agency PTI.
It was unclear for most of the day if Mamata Banerjee would make it through in Nandigram despite her party’s spectacular performance elsewhere in the state. At around 3.30pm, Banerjee was leading over protégé-turned-adversary Suvendu Adhikari with a slim margin of 3,000 votes after trailing for several hours. There were conflicting reports on the outcome. Later the TMC said the counting process is still on.
But Nandigram isn’t the only seat that could flipped.
A quick analysis of the Election Commission’s data indicates that there are nearly 60 seats where the margin of lead is 2,000 or less.
The TMC is leading in nearly 36 of them including 11 seats where it has a lead of less than 500 votes. In another 10 seats, it has a lead of between 500 and 1,000 votes.
{{/usCountry}}The TMC is leading in nearly 36 of them including 11 seats where it has a lead of less than 500 votes. In another 10 seats, it has a lead of between 500 and 1,000 votes.
{{/usCountry}}The BJP is leading in 9 constituencies with a margin of less than 2,000 including three where the margin is less than 500 votes.
In Bhatpara in North 24 Parganas where a college student was killed in post-poll clashes on Sunday last, for instance, the BJP nominee Pawan Kumar Singh is ahead by just 90 votes. Ditto in West Burdwan district’s Kulti that falls in Bengal’s biggest industrial and coal mining zone and is home to a large number of Hindi-speaking people. The BJP’s Ajay Kumar Poddar, according to the EC website, was leading by nearly 400 votes before falling behind the Trinamool’s Ujjal Chatterjee by a slender margin of 1,247 votes. There are still many more rounds to go.
The Trinamool’s Sayantika Banerjee was ahead in Bankura by 45 votes before trailing to the BJP’s Niladari Sekhar Dana who has a slim lead of 1,193 votes.