HEADLINE |
TMC stuns poll pundits, takes commanding lead in 29 seats, BJP falters, leads in 12 seats
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Defying all exit-poll predictions, the TMC raced ahead in 29 of West
Bengal's 42 Lok Sabha seats, surprising political pundits, while the BJP
struggled to reach double digits, leading in only 12 seats, and
Congress won just one seat, according to the EC website. 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 seven 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 was trailing in Baharampur, from where West Bengal Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury is seeking a sixth term. Chowdhury was trailing by a margin of 73,000 votes against TMC's Yusuf Pathan. TMC candidate and sitting MP Abhishek Banerjee is leading in Diamond Harbour over his nearest rival, BJP's Abhijit Das, by a margin of 707,360 votes, probably the highest-ever margin in Bengal in last few decades. In Bolpur, sitting TMC MP Asit Mal was leading by a margin of 323,192 votes over BJP's Piya Saha. Heavyweight BJP candidate and state president Sukanta Majumdar was
trailing in Balurghat seat over his nearest rival, TMC's Biplab Mitra,
by 15,554 votes, as per the EC website. In Ranaghat Lok Sabha seat, BJP's Jagannath Sarkar was leading by over 88716 votes against TMC's Mukut Mani Adhikari. In Krishnanagar, TMC candidate Mahua Moitra, who was expelled last year from Lok Sabha in the cash-for-query scam, was leading by a margin of 57,083 votes over her nearest BJP rival, Amrita Roy. Heavyweight BJP candidate Shantanu Thakur was leading in West
Bengal's Bongaon seat - a Matua bastion - over his nearest rival, TMC's
Biswajit Das, by over 63,947 votes. BJP candidate SS Ahluwalia was trailing in Asansol seat over his nearest rival, TMC's Shatrughan Sinha, by 59,677 votes. TMC candidate Arup Chakraborty was ahead of BJP candidate and sitting
MP Subhas Sarkar in Bankura Lok Sabha constituency by 32,783 votes. In the Bardhaman-Durgapur seat, TMC candidate Kirti Azad was leading by 137,564 votes over his nearest BJP rival, Dilip Ghosh. In Kolkata South, TMC candidate Mala Roy was leading over her nearest rival, CPI(M)'s Saira Shah Halim, by a margin of 162,771 votes. In Barrackpore, TMC's Partha Bhowmick was leading by a margin of
60,421 votes over his nearest rival and sitting MP, Arjun Singh. In Birbhum, TMC's three-term MP Satabdi Roy was leading by a massive margin of over 161,000 votes over BJP's Debtanu Bhattacharya. In Ghatal, TMC candidate and two-term MP Dipak Adhikari, aka Dev, was
leading by a margin of 160,968 votes over his nearest BJP rival,
Hiranmoy Chattopadhyay. In Junglemahal area, the BJP was trailing in
three - Bankura, Medinipur, and Jhargram - of the five seats it had won
last time. |