In the West Bengal election, the contest between TMC’s Mamata Banerjee and BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari was a neck to neck fight. Mamata has won the West Bengal election, but lost the seat of Nandigram by 1736 votes to Suvendu Adhikari.
Till the fourth round of vote counting, Banerjee was trailing behind her one-time aide Adhikari in Nandigram in East Midnapore district by a margin of 3,710 votes.
But in the later rounds of vote counting, Mamata Banerjee had steadily picked up the pace. Adhikari and Banerjee were alternately leading each other by margins ranging from 6 to thousands. At one point in the evening, it was reported that Suvendu was defeated by Mamata Banerjee by 1200 votes.
Once a trusted aide of Mamata Banerjee, Adhikari defected into the BJP last year along with other Trinamool Congress rebels in the presence of party leader and Union Minister Amit Shah at a rally in Midnapore. In the 2016 assembly elections in the state, Suvendu Adhikari had won the prized Nandigram seat for the TMC. Upping the ante, Mamata Banerjee vacated her existing seat of Bhowanipore to challenge her one-time “right-hand man”.
Mamata Banerjee has stated that the party will legally challenge the result as she doubts that there have been some malpractices. In this regard, the chief electoral officer of West Bengal has stated that the returning officer would be responsible for the final declaration of counting. It must be noted that Mamata Banerjee had earlier stated that she will move the Supreme Court against the election commission, as she claims that the poll body works at the behest of the central government.
In a press conference, Mamata Banerjee congratulated West Bengal and it’s people for defeating BJP.
Mamata said at the conference, “Do not worry about Nandigram, I struggled for Nandigram because I fought a movement. It is ok. Let the Nandigram people give whatever verdict they want, I accept that. I do not mind. We won more than 221 seats and BJP has lost the election.”
She also added, “But I will move the court because I have information that after the declaration of results there were some manipulations done and I will reveal those. BJP has lost the elections. They played dirty politics. We faced the horror of the Election Commission.”
After the conference, Ms Banerjee paid a visit to the Kalighat Temple to offer her prayer to Goddess Kali as a mark of thanks.
