TMC ahead in 30 of 42 seats in Bengal; BJP trailing in all seats it won in 2019
In the 2021 assembly polls, the BJP bagged 30 of the 54 seats in the eight north Bengal districts, although the TMC won 213 of the state’s 294 seats
Kolkata: Weeks after Prime Minister Narendra Modi predicted that his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would show its best performance in West Bengal, where it had targeted 30 of the state’s 42 seats, the saffron camp trailed Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) at 32 seats as the first round of counting was coming to its end around 11am. The counting of votes began at 8am. The BJP was only ahead in eight seats.
The trend was visible in both south and north Bengal, although the latter was seen as a BJP bastion as it had won seven of the eight Lok Sabha seats in north Bengal region in 2019.
In the 2021 assembly polls, the BJP bagged 30 of the 54 seats in the eight north Bengal districts, although the TMC won 213 of the state’s 294 seats.
Also Read: TMC holds Kolkata North, South in early trends
In 2019, when BJP set a record in Bengal by winning 18 seats across Bengal, it showed its best performance in the north Bengal region by winning seven of the region’s eight Lok Sabha seats.
In north Bengal’s Raiganj seat, TMC’s Krishna Kalyani was ahead of BJP’s Kartick Paul by around 7,000 votes till 11am. In Kolkata Dakshin, TMC candidate and incumbent MP Mala Roy was leading by 32,239 votes against BJP’s Debasree Chaudhury, who had won this seat in 2019.
In north Bengal’s Balurghat seat, BJP state president Sukanta Majumdar, who won in the 2019 polls, was behind TMC’s Biplab Mitra, a college teacher who recently joined the ruling party. Mitra is leading by 14,574 votes.
Also Read: Mamata clinches Bengal for TMC again
In south Bengal, BJP’s Arjun Singh was trailing TMC minister Partha Bhowmick by over 2,000 votes. Singh switched over to the BJP from TMC before the 2019 polls and wrested the Barrackpore seat in North 24 Parganas district. He went back to TMC and returned to BJP again before the 2024 election.
Congress, which won two seats in 2019 and contested as an ally of the Left Front this year, seemed to be holding its ground. The party’s state president, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, was ahead of TMC’s Yusuf Pathan by nearly 2,000 votes in Berhampore seat, while BJP’s Nirmal Kumar Saha was also trailing.
