Another former Congress leader, Abu Naser Khan Chowdhury, brother of ex-Railway minister A B A Ghani Khan Chowdhury, who contested from Sujapur in Malda district on TMC ticket, lost to Isa Khan Chowdhury of Congress by over 47,000 votes. The Trinamool was accused of running a “syndicate raj” in West Bengal.
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The newly elected MLAs of the Trinamool Congress on Friday formally elected Mamata Banerjee as the legislative party leader, a day after the party stormed back to power defeating the Left-Congress alliance and BJP in the recently concluded Assembly polls here.
In the elections, ruling All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) of Chief Minister Mamta Banerjee crossed the two-third mark by winning 211 seats. She can now be the person who revives Bengal’s economy and propels the state to the top of economic and human development rankings. Although many poll experts had opined that any erosion of BJP’s vote share which had gone up to almost 17 per cent in 2014 Lok Sabha election, would benefit the Left-Congress alliance, the results indicated otherwise.
But in a quirk of fate the end result brought in for the Left the awful possibility of being extinct from the land it lorded over for long though the Congress reaped a nice dividend by increasing its seats to 44 from 42.
Ashis Chatterjee, a psephologist with Kolkata TV, says the alliance lost 70 seats within a striking distance of 5,000 or less votes. West Bengal Speaker Biman Banerjee has won from Baruipur Paschim Constituency.
The BJP went soft on Mamata, though it kept up a pretence of opposing her, ostensibly in exchange for her support in the Rajya Sabha where the party lacked numbers to get crucial bills passed.
The BJP was ahead in six and its alliance partner Gorkha Janmukti Morcha in three. All these constituencies have a sizeable Muslim population and the consolidation on religious lines helped it get a majority of Hindu votes. And now that the BJP has come to power in Assam, it should concentrate on gaining popularity in the other states of the region. But this time around, the TMC alone has crossed the 210 mark and won a vote share of over 47 – up nearly 7% from the 2011 assembly polls. Only the CPI (M)-led Left Front suffered.
The Congress, which had secured 78 seats in the last elections, was on Thursday victorious in 10 seats and was leading in 14 (total 24).
The dismal scenario for the Left-Congress alliance was reflected in its unofficial chief ministerial candidate, CPI-M state secretary Surjya Kanta Mishra falling behind by over 4,000 votes against his Trinamool Congress opponent. The party had only one member in the outgoing Assembly. The only solace the Joat can derive from the result is that it managed to defeat two corruption-tainted ministers – Sport and Transport Minister Madan Mitra, who is in jail, and Backward Communities’ Development Minister Upen Biswas. She defeated her nearest rival Saumendranath Bera of the CPI-M by 15,403 votes.
Reacting to the TMC’s decisive victory, Banerjee thanked the people of the state and promised to take forward the march of poriborton (change) that she and her party had initiated in 2011.
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However, south Bengal – with 218 of 294 seats – entirely backed Ms. Banerjee.
