TMC ahead in 201 seats in Bengal; Mamata Banerjee wins Nandigram - Hindustan Times
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TMC ahead in 201 seats in Bengal; Mamata Banerjee wins Nandigram

May 02, 2021 04:36 PM IST

The CM, who was trailing in Nandigram at the end of the third round, defeated cabinet colleague-turned-adversary Suvendu Adhikari by 1,200 votes. Among the important BJP candidates who were trailing were Union minister Babul Supriyo, and Lok Sabha member Locket Chatterjee

At the end of the third round of counting of votes on Sunday morning, Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) was ahead in 201 of the 292 assembly seats where polls were held in an unprecedented eight phases between March 27 and April 29, while its main contender, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was ahead in 82 seats.

Chief minister Mamata Banerjee. (File photo)
Chief minister Mamata Banerjee. (File photo)

The bitter election campaign in the state was marked by a few hundred rallies and roadshows held by BJP leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah, those from the TMC.

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The BJP’s election office at Hastings in south Kolkata wore a deserted look while TMC workers could be seen gathered at many places amid a ban on celebrations by the Election Commission (EC) in view of the spike in Covid-19 cases.

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Chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who was initially trailing at the end of the third round, managed to defeat her cabinet colleague-turned-adversary Suvendu Adhikari by 1,200 votes on Nandigram seat. TMC candidates were ahead in most of the seats in South 24 Parganas, Howrah, Hooghly and Kolkata.

The campaigning in Nandigram, where Muslims constitute 27% of the population, became a highly polarised one, with Adhikari referring to Banerjee as “begum” (Muslim empress) at all his rallies.

At the Bhawanipore seat in south Kolkata, from where Banerjee contested earlier polls, the BJP’s Rudranil Ghosh, an actor-turned-politician, was trailing behind power minister Sovandeb Chattopadhyay till noon.

Among the high-profile BJP candidates who were ahead in the race at the beginning of the fourth round of counting were former chief economic adviser to the government of India Ashok Lahiri at Balurghat in South Dinajpur district and former army colonel Diptangshu Chowdhury at the Durgapur East seat in West Burdwan district. Chowdhury once left the BJP and joined the TMC but returned to the saffron camp in December last year.

The BJP was ahead of the TMC in several seats in north Bengal. Of these, BJP’s Shankar Ghosh who left the CPI(M) and joined the saffron camp days before the polls, won the Siliguri seat defeating veteran CPI(M) leader and former urban development minister Asok Bhattacharya.

Among the important BJP candidates who were trailing were Union minister Babul Supriyo, who contested the Tollygunge seat in south Kolkata and Lok Sabha member Locket Chatterjee, who contested from Chinsurah in Hooghly district. Former Rajya Sabha member and BJP leader Swapan Dasgupta was trailing at the Tarakeswar seat in Hooghly district.

Other BJP candidates who were trailing were Bengal BJP’s chief spokesperson Samik Bhattacharya at Rajarhat-Gopapur in Kolkata’s eastern fringes, actress Payel Sarkar who contested the Behala East seat in south-east Kolkata, former IPS officer Bharati Ghosh, who contested the Debra seat in East Midnapore, and retired deputy chief of the Indian Army Subrata Saha, who contested the Rashbehari seat in south Kolkata.

The Sanjukta Morcha or joint alliance comprising the Congress, Left parties and cleric Abbasuddin Siddiqui’s newly launched Indian Secular Front (ISF) was trailing in all seats till noon. Among the prominent alliance candidates who were trailing were the CPI(M)’s Sujan Chakraborty at Jadavpur in Kolkata’s southern outskirts, JNU Left student union president Aishe Ghosh at Jamuria in West Burdwan and the CPI(M)’s Srijan Bhattacharya at Singur in Hooghly district.

“Whatever be the outcome, our party will accept it. However, it is clear that the BJP will emerge as the main opposition party in Bengal,” said Bengal BJP vice-president Jay Prakash Majumdar.

TMC spokesperson and former advocate general Biswajit Deb said: “The trend clearly shows that people have rejected the traitors who left the TMC and joined BJP.”

In pandemic-hit Bengal, the polls at two of the total of 294 seats will be held on May 16 in Murshidabad district where two opposition candidates died of Covid-19 in mid-April. Two other candidates died during the polls.

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