Trinamool rules the roost in Bengal with 34 seats

The Trinamool Congress defied all exit poll surveys and got 34 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats even though the celebrations seemed muted with BJP signaling its growth in the state by getting one more than its existing seat of Darjeeling.

If the BJP was in a mood to revel, the Left looked despondent as its status of a national party is at stake with just two seats in West Bengal.

While the Trinamool came up with its best performance in the state, better than the 19-seat tally it had acquired in 2009, the Congress lost two of its existing seats, and retaining just four.

The Left, which has been routed out, managed to squirm through with a slender lead at Raiganj in north Bengal, where former CPM MP Md Salim defeated sitting Congress MP Deep Dasmunshi.

The only saving grace for Congress came in the form of party state president and junior rail minister Adhir Chowdhury, who retained his Baharampur seat with more than 3.56 lakh votes.

The party also seemed to have retained its supremacy over north Bengal with both sitting MPs from Malda Dakshin (South) and Malda Uttar (North), Abu Hasem Khan Chowdhury and Mausam Benazir Noor, winning with significant margins.

The Left lost its 2009 tally of 15 seats to just two. This is Left’s worst performance since it came to power in the state in 1977.

The BJP, which had around six per cent support across the state and acquired a vote share of 12 per cent in a by-poll at Jangipur Parliamentary seat in 2012, took its share up to 17 per cent, eating into the Left and the Congress vote banks.

The Left’s vote share has been relegated to 29.5 and that of the Congress to 9.7 per cent respectively.

While popular playback singer Babul Supriyo, who fought on a BJP ticket from Asansol, won with a margin of more than 70,000, the party retained its Darjeeling seat with S S Ahluwalia defeating former Indian football captain Bhaichung Bhutia of the Trinamool by over 1.97 lakh votes.

Prominent Trinamool winners include former railway minister Dinesh Trivedi (Barrackpore), Mamata Banerjee’s nephew Abhishek Banerjee (Diamond Harbour), state president Subrata Bakshi (Kolkata South), party chief whip in Parliament Sudip Bandyopadhyay (Kolkata North), Harvard University professor Sugata Bose (Jadavpur) and former Union minister Sougata Roy (Dumdum).

And the winning Trinamool celebrity candidates include actors Sandhya Roy (Medinipur) and Moon Moon Sen (Bankura), actors Tapas Pal (Krishnanagar) and Satabdi Roy (Birbhum), Arjuna awardee football player Prasun Mukherjee (Howrah) and current Bengali cinema heart-throb Dipak Adhikari alias Dev (Ghatal) .

While celebrations seemed muted at Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee’s south Kolkata residence, she told reporters that her party will play a “greater constructive role in the country”.

She congratulated party candidates for winning despite “malicious campaign” launched by a section of the media.

“There was so much of malicious campaign, but still CPM simply vanished from the market. We thank the people... We are for harmony of all castes, religions and creeds. We are in favour of economic stability, financial stability and political stability,” she stated.