TMC makes major gains in Bengal, punctures BJP

This time though the TMC was a part of the Opposition INDIA bloc nationally, it fought alone in West Bengal, contesting all the 42 Lok Sabha seats. Despite being besieged by a series of corruption cases since the 2021 Assembly polls, the TMC fought the election on welfare schemes of the state government like Lakshmir Bhandar, the direct transfer benefit scheme for women, and harped on the “BJP is anti-Bengali” campaign.

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The TMC vote share also jumped from 43.3 percent in 2019 to 46.01 per cent. Simultaneously, the BJP’s vote shrunk by 2.5 percentage points — from 40.70 per cent to 38.73 per cent.

For the Congress and the CPI(M)-led Left Front, which had a seat-sharing agreement, unlike the last Lok Sabha polls, their overall vote share remained almost the same – 12 per cent in 2019 and 11 per cent now. While the Congress won only one seat – Malda Dakshin, down from two in 2019; the Left failed to open its account like in the previous election.

However, in at least 12 Lok Sabha constituencies, the vote share of the Congress and CPI(M) ranged from 17 per cent to above 20 per cent, which observers believe was chipped away from the BJP’s share, thereby reducing the latter’s seats.

In the 2021 Assembly elections, TMC had secured 48.02 per cent of votes, while the BJP and Left-Congress got 38.15 per cent and 7.66 per cent of votes, respectively.

TMC national general secretary and Number 2 in the party, Abhishek Banerjee, broke all previous records, by winning Diamond Harbour seat with a margin of 7,10,930 votes.

Former cricketer Yusuf Pathan, who made his electoral debut on a TMC ticket, turned out to be a giant killer by defeating the five-time MP and state Congress unit president, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, in Baharampur.

TMC’s Mahua Moitra, who was disqualified from Lok Sabha by a parliamentary panel over the alleged “cash for query”, was re-elected from Krishnanagar. Senior TMC leader Kalyan Banerjee won from Sreerampur, Sudip Bandopadhyay from Kolkata-Uttar and Kakali Ghosh Dastidar from Barasat. Actor-politician Shatrughan Sinha retained the Asansol seat for the party, defeating BJP’s SS Ahluwalia.

On Tuesday evening as the party workers celebrated the victory, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said: “I am happy. INDIA has won, (PM Narendra) Modi has lost. He has lost all credibility, and should immediately resign. He said, BJP will get charso paar (cross 400 seats)… but he did not get a majority. The PM broke many parties and now people have broken his morale. Modi is now falling at the feet of TDP and (JD(U) chief) Nitish (Kumar) to form the government.”

“Now, they cannot pass any law as per their wish. They cannot misuse Central agencies. Now, if they try, we will protest unitedly. We will not spare the BJP, which used to intimidate us using central agencies and the two-thirds majority in Parliament. Neither will we forgive them, nor will the other parties of the INDIA bloc,” she added.

She said her nephew Abhishek Banerjee, the TMC’s national general secretary, would attend the INDIA bloc meeting in New Delhi on Wednesday but said that her party has not been informed about it yet. “We are yet to get an invitation. However, I cannot go right now. Abhishek will attend the meeting. I will certainly help INDIA. I always try to see Modi out. I think INDIA has the capacity to oust Modi.”

“I have texted Rahul (congratulating him). Maybe they were busy. They haven’t contacted us yet, but it doesn’t matter if they do or they don’t… I always said they (Congress) will not win more than two (seats in Bengal). What happened we all saw,” she said.

Major losses by BJP

Meanwhile, the BJP faced a major setback with its two Union ministers losing their seats — Nisith Pramanik lost to TMC’s Jagadish Prasad Basunia in Cooch Behar, and Subhas Sarkar lost to Arup Chakraborty in Bankura. Former state BJP president Dilip Ghosh lost to cricketer-turned-politician Kirti Azad in Bardhaman-Durgapur. Locket Chatterjee lost from Hooghly to television personality Rachana Banerjee, who was fielded by the TMC.

Another Union Minister Shantanu Thakur, however, won from Bongaon with a margin of 73,000 votes.

The BJP had made corruption and Sandeshkhali incident its major poll plank, accusing the TMC government in the state of exploiting people. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, campaigning for the BJP, had hit out at TMC on the Sandeshkhali issue, calling the party “anti-women” in every public meeting. The party also fielded one of the alleged victims of Sandeshkhali, Rekha Patra, who lost to TMC’s Haji Nurul Islam by a margin of over 3 lakh votes in Basirhat.

Zero-sum game for Left-Congress alliance

The Left-Congress alliance did not perform as per its expectations, winning only one seat — Isha Khan Chowdhury from Malda Dakshin. In 2019, the Congress had won two seats. However, the Left-Congress alliance was instrumental in cutting votes from the BJP in at least a dozen seats. For instance, BJP lost seats like Bankura, Dum Dum, Krishnanagar, Howrah, Sreerampore, Burdwan-Durgapur, Burdwan Purba, Asansol, Purulia, where the vote share of the Left and Congress went up from the previous election.

Speaking to mediapersons, state Congress chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said: “There was an effect of polarisation in Baharampur seat. The BJP made gains here and that was the danger.” “We have to introspect. We did not perform as we had expected to do,” said Md Salim, CPI(M) state secretary who lost from Murshidabad.
“People chose whom they will vote for. They thought Laksmir Bhandar was more important than the future of their children. We have to respect that and work more,” said Dipsita Dhar, CPI(M) candidate from Sreerampur. Dipsita was among the youth faces CPI(M) had fielded this time. She secured 14 per cent of the votes in Sreerampur.