Led by mercurial Mamata Banerjee, Trinamool Congress today stormed back to power in West Bengal getting more than two-thirds majority decimating the opposition Left-Congress alliance while BJP captured three seats.
Contesting the poll on its own, TMC bagged 211 of the 294 seats at stake while Congress-Left combine got 76 seats. TMC had secured 184 seats in 2011 Assembly election when it had fought in alliance with Congress.
The Congress-Left combine did not make much headway despite prediction by political pundits. Congress, however, did better than its Left partners securing 44 seats. Left partners CPI-M bagged 26 seats, RSP-3, CPI-1 and Forward Bloc-2.
The tally of BJP which had one seat in the outgoing House, has gone upto three with state party president Dilip Ghosh winning from Kharagpur. He defeated Congress veteran Gyan Singh Sohanpal who had won the seat nine times in a row.
The other two seats won by BJP are Madarihat and Baishnabnagar.
Rahul Sinha, BJP national secretary, and the party's lone member in the outgoing Assembly Shamik Bhattacharya lost. Rupa Ganguly, actor turned BJP state Mahila Morcha president, was also defeated.
In Darjeeling hills, Gorkha Janmukti Morcha won three seats.
Apart from TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee, other prominent winners of the party included ministers Subrata Mukherjee, Amit Mitra, Partha Chatterjee, Firhad Hakim, Moloy Ghatak and city mayor Sovan Chatterjee.
The ministers who lost included Manish Gupta, Chandrima Bhattacharya, Krishnendu Narayan Chowdhury, Sabitri Mitra, Shyamapada Mukherjee, Shankar Chakrabarty, Upen Biswas and Abdul Karim Chowdhury.
Another prominent TMC leader Madan Mitra who was in jail in connection with Saradha chit fund scam, lost.
CPI-M state secretary Surjya Kanta Mishra was defeated in Narayangarh constituency in West Midnapore. Another CPI-M veteran and former minister Kanti Ganguly lost from Raidighi.
CPI-M veteran and Siliguri mayor Ashok Bhattacharya, however, emerged victorious.
Banerjee, who won from Bhabanipur constituency by 25,301 votes, said "contesting on its own, TMC got two-thirds majority fighting the entire opposition".
She said elected members of TMC will meet here tomorrow to elect their leader. The new TMC government will take oath on May 27, she said.
TMC swept the metropolis winning all the 11 seats but failed to get a single seat in Malda and Darjeeling districts.
Published 19 May 2016, 07:09 IST