The Lok Sabha elections in West Bengal have thrown up unexpected results. While the Trinamool Congress has won 29 seats, the BJP managed to win 12, and the Congress got one seat. But the figures hid many embarrassments.
Well-known BJP leaders like Union Ministers of State Nisith Adhikari and Subhas Sarkar lost, as did former State BJP president Dilip Ghosh, former Union Minister of State Debasree Chaudhuri, and big names like S.S. Alhuwalia, Locket Chatterjee, BJP thinktank member Anirban Ganguly, Arjun Singh, Agnimitra Paul.
Sandeshkhali protestor and the BJP’s candidate from Basirhat, Rekha Patra, who was called Shakti Swaroopa by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, lost by a whooping margin of 332949 to Sk. Nurul Islam of the Trinamool. A relieved Mamata Banerjee, in her press meet, pointed out that Rekha Patra had lost in her own booth, indicating that people had refused to buy the allegations of rape and torture by her party leaders.
S.S. Alhuwalia, former Union Minister, was defeated by the Trinamool’s star candidate Shatrughan Sinha from Asansol. Former cricketer Pathan Yusuf, who was imported from Gujarat by Mamata Banerjee to fight Congress veteran Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, in Muslim-majority Baharampur, won.
In Bardhaman-Durgapur, another former cricketer Kirti Azad representing the Trinamool Congress trounced former BJP state president Dilip Ghosh by a whooping margin of 137981 votes.
In the Hooghly seat, rookie television anchor and actor Rachna Banerjee, personally chosen by Mamata Banerjee, defeated the BJP’s Mahila Morcha leader and sitting MP Locket Chatterjee.
Another widely anticipated clash in the Barrackpore seat saw State Irrigation Minister Partha Bhowmik defeating the BJP’s strongman Arjun Singh. In a big relief to the BJP amid the electoral carnage, former High Court judge Abhijit Gangopadhyay, who became a household name for his judgements on the corruption cases against Trinamool Congress leaders, won from Tamluk.
Another big defeat for the anti-Trinamool parties was the loss of the CPIM’s Md. Salim from the Muslim-dominated Murshidabad seat, which he was widely expected to win.
The Trinamool’s second-in-command Abhishek Banerjee retained the Diamond Harbour seat which he had won twice earlier, defeating the Bharatiya Janata Party’s candidate Abhijit Das (Bobby) by a whooping margin of more than 7 lakh votes. This is perhaps the biggest winning margin in the Lok Sabha ever.
However, in a late-evening interaction with the media, Suvendu Adhikari, who was touted as the brain behind the BJP’s campaign in the State, refused to see the defeats as any great debacle. “I have been in politics long enough to know such things happen. It happens with all parties. Mamata too faced it. We have already started out introspection, but a greater task before us is to ensure protection and security to our supporters. The Trinamool Congress has a long history of torturing people who do not vote for it.”
