TMC stuns poll pundits, bags 29 seats, BJP wins in 12

Kolkata, June 4 (PTI) The TMC maintained its dominance in West Bengal as CM Mamata Banerjee led her party to a resounding victory and dealing a blow to the BJP target of securing 35 seats as they just managed to reach double digits.

Till 9 pm the TMC won 17 and was leading in 12 of 42 Lok Sabha seats, while the BJP struggled to reach double digits, winning three and leading in nine seats, and Congress won just one seat, according to the EC website.

The CPI (M) seems to be failing to open its account from the state just like in 2019.

As TMC's leads translate into results, the party is set for its second-best performance in the state, following its 2014 victory when it won 34 seats.

The TMC had secured 46 per cent of the votes, up from 43 per cent in 2019.

In the last Lok Sabha polls, the TMC won 22 seats, the BJP 18, and the Congress two. Despite a vigorous campaign led by top BJP leaders, the party is poised to see a decline of six seats and a 2 per cent drop in vote share, having received 40 per cent of the votes in 2019.

The Congress, which was leading in Malda South, received a jolt as it lost in Baharampur, from where West Bengal Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury is seeking a sixth term. Chowdhury was trailing by a margin of 85,000 votes against TMC's Yusuf Pathan.

Despite facing a barrage of challenges including corruption allegations and internal conflicts, the TMC stood strong, even after opting to go solo post its withdrawal from the INDIA bloc in the state.

The TMC swept the Gangetic plains, which comprises five districts of North & South 24 Parganas, Kolkata, Howrah, and Hooghly, by winning 14 of the 16 Lok Sabha seats.

The BJP's tally was down from three to two in this region.

TMC candidate and sitting MP Abhishek Banerjee scored a hattrick in Diamond Harbour over his nearest rival, BJP's Abhijit Das, by a record margin of 710,360 votes, probably the highest-ever margin in Bengal in the last few decades.

The BJP, hoping to make a strong statement in Basirhat constituency which includes Sandeshkhali, saw its candidate Rekha Patra defeated by TMC veteran Haji Nurul Islam by nearly two lakh votes.

The TMC also did well in the Midnapore region, recognized as Bengal's tribal belt consisting of five districts - Bankura, Paschim Medinipur, Purba Medinipur, Purulia, and Jhargram- contributing eight representatives to the Lok Sabha.

However, Union Minister and sitting BJP MP from Bankura, Subhas Sarkar, lost to TMC's Arup Chakraborty by a margin of 32,778 votes.

In 2019, the BJP had won five seats, whereas the TMC had won three seats in this region.

The BJP, however, was able to maintain its stronghold over Jalpaiguri region, recognized as the hills and foothills of the state, where the BJP had won the all four Lok Sabha seats in 2019.

Although the BJP won three seats in the region but had to struggle a lot to reach the finishing line as the victory margins got slashed as compared to the last parliamentary polls.

However, the saffron camp faced an upset in Cooch Behar, where its sitting MP and Union minister Nisith Pramanik was trailing by a margin of 39250 votes against his TMC rival, Jagadish Chandra Barma Basunia.

In the Matua belt of Bengal, which has three seats - Bongaon, Ranaghat and Krishnanagar -, the BJP retained the first two seats with Union Minister Shantanu Thakur retaining the Matua bastion of Bongoan Lok Sabha seat by a margin of over 73,000 votes.

In Krishnanagar, TMC candidate Mahua Moitra, who was expelled last year from Lok Sabha in the cash-for-query scam, was leading by an irreversible margin of 57,083 votes over her nearest BJP rival, Amrita Roy.

Apart from these regions, the TMC scored big in seats such as Asansol, where TMC's Shatrughan Sinha won by a margin of 59,000 votes against BJP's S S Ahluwalia and Bardhaman-Durgapur, where TMC's Kirti Azad defeated BJP's Dilip Ghosh by a margin of 1,37,000 votes, which were won by the BJP in 2019.

Mamata Banerjee dedicated this victory to the masses and said PM Narendra Modi should immediately resign "accepting the moral defeat" because he campaigned in the Lok Sabha polls claiming that the BJP would win over 400 seats but in reality, it failed to get a majority on its own.

"PM Modi has lost all credibility, he should immediately resign. India has won, Modi has lost. The PM broke many parties and now people have broken his morale. Modi is now falling at the feet of TDP and Nitish (Kumar) to form the government," she said.

The West Bengal BJP unit, which had set a target of winning 35 seats but managed to touch double digits, said it would go for introspection for the reasons behind the defeat.

"Our party workers have fought hard but in some seats, we got defeated. We would introspect the reasons behind the defeat," BJP state spokesperson Samik Bhattacharya said.

Despite their fervent efforts, they failed to gain substantial ground, primarily due to internal divisions, organisational frailties, and the formidable impact of the Left-Congress alliance, analysts said.

According to political observers, the breakdown of seat-sharing talks between the TMC and the Congress in January appeared to benefit Mamata Banerjee's party, setting the stage for a three-cornered electoral contest and providing a strategic advantage to the TMC. PTI SCH/DC PNT SUS SMY AMR BSM PNT MNB