The high-profile Bhabanipur Assembly constituency is staring at a nail-biting finish. While TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee surged to a stellar lead of more than 19000 votes after a see-saw battle in the opening few rounds, BJP's Suvendu Adhikari threatened a late twist as he reduced the lead by almost 60 per cent by the end of 12 of the 20 rounds of counting.
Banerjee opened with a slender lead of 1,996 votes in the first round, polling 3,666 votes against Adhikari's 1,670, before the leader of the opposition flipped the script to move ahead of the incumbent Chief Minister by 1,558 votes. Banerjee, however, bounced back quickly in the third to take a lead by just 898 votes, and never saw back. By the sixth round, the lead surged to over 19,000, despite the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) facing a drubbing in the overall West Bengal scenario.
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However, the lead kept tumbling round after round thereafter, falling to 17,371 votes by the end of the seventh round, 15,494 in the eighth, 12,131 by the 10th, and 7184 by the 12th.
According to Election Commission data, Banerjee secured 44729 votes against Adhikari's 37545, with just eight more rounds of counting remaining.
Banerjee vs Adhikari - a brief look at how allies turned adversaries
{{/usCountry}}According to Election Commission data, Banerjee secured 44729 votes against Adhikari's 37545, with just eight more rounds of counting remaining.
Banerjee vs Adhikari - a brief look at how allies turned adversaries
{{/usCountry}}Adhikari has long served as Banerjee's lieutenant in TMC and was at the forefront during the 2007/08 Nandigram movement against the then-Left Front government. That very movement had propelled Mamata to victory in the 2011 Legislative Election, ending 34 years of Communist rule in Bengal.
It was only in 2020 that Adhikari changed base and joined the BJP after realising he could be sidelined from the party he had helped build, amid the rising influence of Mamata's nephew, Abhishek Banerjee.
The rivalry eventually took shape in the 2021 election when Mamata challenged Adhikari on his home turf in Nandigram. The former lost by a razor-thin margin of 1956 votes. Although it was a personal defeat for Banerjee, TMC won across the state.
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The rivalry reached fever pitch when, in a dramatic reversal, Adhikari, who is also contesting from Nandigram, was now made to challenge Banerjee on her home turf. He branded this the "final nail in the coffin" for the TMC. That phrase was used in reference to the vote-on-account tabled by TMC in February. “Today, in the vote-on-account, finance minister Chandrima Bhattacharya, following the instructions of Mamata Banerjee, put the final nail in the coffin of the dreams of 2.15 crore youths, clearly indicating that they should not expect jobs from the government,” he had said.