Basudeb Pal
As the counting of votes began in the morning of May 19, the return of Mamata Banerjee’s Trinmaool Congress became evident in initial trends only. However, nobody had expected that the opposition parties including the Congress and CPM combine would suffer such a humiliating defeat. As the picture got clear the TMC broke the previous record of seats and bagged 211 out of 294. Proving anti-incumbency speculations wrong, the vote percentage of the ruling Trinamool Congress also improved compared to the 2014 general elections. The unholy alliance between Congress and CPM benefited only the Congress and proved very costly to the left front. The Congress not only bagged 44 seats but also improved its vote percentage. Left partners CPI-M bagged 26 seats, RSP-3, CPI-1 and Forward Bloc-2. The vote percentage of BJP and left front declined. However the vote percentage of the Congress almost doubled. The Congress had contested only 91 seats and 76 of those seats were in alliance with the left front. The contest on other seats was friendly.
The BJP had given five seats to its alliance partner Gorkha Janmukti Morcha which won three seats.
In the previous assembly the BJP had only one MLA. State BJP general secretary Shri Shamik Bhattacharya had won the byelection. But he lost that seat this time. Former BJP state president and present national general secretary Rahul Sinha lost the Jorasanki seat of Kolkata to TMC’s Sunita Bakshi. But BJP present state president Dilip Ghosh won Khadagpur city seat. He defeated the Congress-left candidate by a margin of more than 6000 votes. He became state president hardly five months back and it was his maiden election. Two other seats won by BJP are Madarihat and Baishnabnagar.
From 16.84 per cent, the BJP vote share declined to seven per cent and rest at 10.20 per cent now. While the TMC vote share shot up by 8 per cent from 39 per cent, the Left suffered a sharp decline from 28 per cent to 25 per cent. The TMC has swept with 46.7 per cent vote share.
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