Mamata Banerjee’s nephew and Trinamool Congress (TMC) national general secretary scored a record-breaking victory in the Diamond Harbour seat by defeating Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Abhijit Das by a margin of over 7 lakh votes. Banerjee broke the record for the highest margin in West Bengal after former CPI(M) MP Anil Basu won the 2004 Lok Sabha seat from Arambagh by a margin of 6,82,502. According to Election Commission data, Banerjee secured 10,48,230 votes with 68.48 per cent vote share in the Diamond Harbour contest. Abhijit Das, on the other hand, secured 337,300 votes with 22.03 per cent. CPM’s Prateek Ur Rahman trailed far behind with 86,953 votes (5.68 per cent). Banerjee has thus registered the highest margin of victory in the state – 7,10,930 votes, which is unprecedented in West Bengal politics.
In Asansol, TMC candidate and Bollywood actor Shatrughan Sinha won defeating BJP’s SS Ahluwalia. In a major upset, five-time Congress MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of TMC’s surprise candidate Yusuf Pathan. Also, BJP MP Dilip Ghosh lost to Kirti Jha Azad in the Bardhaman-Durgapur seat. Other leaders like Asit Kumar Mal, Sharmila Sarkar, Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar and Khalilur Rahman won from Bolpur, Bardhaman-East, Barasat and Jangipur respectively.
TMC’s Partha Bhowmick won from Barrackpore, Pratima Mandal won from Joynagar and Prasun Banerjee won from Howrah. BJP leader Nisith Pramanik is trailing in Cooch Behar but is leading in Alipurdurwar, Jalpaiguri and Darjeeling. Disqualified TMC MP Mahua Moitra is ahead of BJP’s Amrita Roy in Krishnanagar. Congress is leading in Malda South. With a target of winning 400 seats across the country, the BJP ran a vigorous campaign in Bengal, highlighting issues such as corruption and the recent incident in Sandeshkhali.
The BJP performed impressively in West Bengal in the 2019 elections, winning 18 seats. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has now declared that Bengal will emerge as the top-performing state for his party in this election cycle. After a dismal performance in the state elections, securing only 77 of the 294 seats, the BJP is pinning its hopes on unconventional candidates such as former Calcutta High Court judge Abhijit Gangopadhyay and Sandeshkhali incident survivor Rekha Patra to consolidate its support base.
