KOLKATA: West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee swept the Lok Sabha polls in West Bengal but the Narendra Modi tsunami has hit her very badly with the TMC losing in Didi’s own Assembly segment of Bhabanipur in Kolkata South constituency to the BJP.
Though the TMC won in 33 seats, the Congress in four and the Left Front decimated to only two seats, a visibly angry Mamata in a press conference at her residence said, “The man of the match in these elections are the masses. Of course, if you talk about money power it was the media which was against us.”
The CPM won two seats, one in north Bengal in Raigunje and another in central part in Murshidabad. While Mohammad Salim of the CPM defeated Congress nominee and former Union MoS Deepa Das Munshi by a slender margin from Raigunj Lok Sabha seat, Badrudozza Khan of the CPM defeated sitting Congress MP Mannan Hossain from Murshidabad constituency, considered a Congress fortress.
The Left Front’s defeat was unprecedented in a state which it once ruled for 34 years from 1977 to 2011. Though Mamata could block the Modi wave, the BJP bagged two seats. With a much reduced margin, S S Ahluwalia of the BJP won the Darjeeling seat with the support of Gorkha
Janamukti Morcha defeating TMC’s celebrity nominee and India’s soccer icon Bhaichung Bhutia. Another surprise came from Babul Supriyo who won from the Asansol constituency defeating TMC’s Dola Sen.
In Darjeeling and Asansol, Modi had held public meetings, which witnessed mammoth gatherings much to everyone’s surprise. Significantly in Kolkata North and Kolkata North, the BJP nominees came second.
In several other seats, the BJP candidates came second replacing the Left Front or Congress nominees.
The TMC not only protected its stronghold in south Bengal, from where it had bagged19 MPs in 2009, but swept the entire state except for the Muslim majority districts of Malda and Murshidabad.
While Mausam Benazir Noor from Maldaha Uttar and her uncle Abu Hashem Khan Chowdhury
from Maldaha Dakshin, both the Congress nominees retained their seats, state Congress president and MoS for Railways Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury won from Baharampur with an impressive margin of more than 3.5 lakh votes.