Biswabrata Goswami
NANDIGRAM, 2 MAY: BJP candidate Suvendu Adhikari today won the battle royal in Bengal’s Nandigram, defeating the Trinamul Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee by a razor-thin margin of 1736 votes.
Earlier, reports suggested that Mamata was winning the seat by a slim margin of 1200 votes against Suvendu Adhikari, her former trusted lieutenant.
The Trinamul Congress has demanded recounting in the constituency, alleging a number of illegalities in the vote counting process. The TMC has written to the CEO requesting an immediate recounting of votes, party sources said, alleging “tampering and mismanagement of numbers from the EVM”.
There were reports that following the declaration of the Nandigram results, after a long day that saw the two candidates swapping leads multiple times, angry TMC supporters pelted stones on Mr Adhikari’s convoy in Haldia.
The Bengal chief minister trailed Suvendu Adhikari in the early rounds of counting, which dimmed her party’s euphoria at a spectacular election victory in Bengal. And finally, Suvendu managed a 1736-vote lead to clinch a victory.
Since the first round of counting, Suvendu started to lead and till the tenth round of counting of votes, Miss Banerjee was trailing behind her one-time aide Adhikari by a margin of 10,379 votes.
But in the later rounds of counting, Mamata Banerjee steadily picked up the pace and ultimately brought down the margin to a close-difference against her long-time aide turned foe Suvendu Adhikari.
In the last round of counting, Adhikari was ahead of Miss Banerjee by just six votes – making it the most closely watched battle in the state.
In a press conference just after the results were announced, the West Bengal chief minister said, “Don’t worry about Nandigram, I struggled for Nandigram because I fought a movement. It’s ok. Let the Nandigram people give whatever verdict they want, I accept that. I don’t mind. We won more than 221 seats and BJP has lost the election.”
We are grateful to the people for this landslide victory. I have to start working for Covid-19 immediately. The swearing-in will be a low-key event because of the prevailing Covid-19 situation, Mamata Banerjee said.
Nandigram was the epicenter of anti-land acquisition movement that catapulted Mamata Banerjee to power for the first time in 2011 and winning here serves as a big message to aides – mainly Mr Adhikari — who ditched her this time to cross over to the BJP.
In 2011, Suvendu Adhikari was by Miss Banerjee’s side as she campaigned for farmers’ land rights. He became an MLA in the constituency and for years, the Adhikari family had a firm grip over Nandigram. But in this election, he was weaponized by the BJP against the chief minister, who was pitched as an “outsider” in Nandigram.
Mamata Banerjee opted for Nandigram after Suvendu Adhikari quit the Trinamul and joined the BJP.
Both Miss Banerjee and Mr Adhikari led a very aggressive campaign and indulged in attacks and counterattacks.
Suvendu Adhikari, after joining the BJP, had vowed to defeat Mamata Banerjee from Nandigram by more than 50,000 votes, placing his career in politics on the bet. “Write this down and mention the date and time. I will leave politics if I cannot defeat her (Mamata Banerjee) by a half lakh (50,000) votes,” Adhikari had said during a rally in south Kolkata. He had also asked the TMC supremo to prepare a letterhead with ‘former chief minister’ written on it.
Mamata Banerjee, on the other hand, has called Suvendu Adhikari a ‘traitor’ and said that she was wrong to have ‘blindly’ supported the Adhikari family once. Dubbing the turncoat leader as ‘Mir Jafar’, Mamata Banerjee said that she won’t be leaving even one inch of soil to Adhikari or any of the opposition leaders.
Meanwhile, BJP national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya credited Mamata Banerjee for the TMC’s astounding performance in Bengal elections, and said his party would introspect the poll results. “The TMC won because of Mamata Banerjee. It seems people have chosen Didi. We will introspect what went wrong, whether it was organisational issues, lack of face, insider- outsider debate. We will see what went wrong,” he said.
Tags: #NandigramElectionResult2021 #shubhenduadhikari #MamataBanerjee #Nandigram #BengalElection2021 #Elections2021
