Hat-trick for TMC

Kolkata: Belying all expectations, the TMC was headed on Sunday for a landslide victory in Assembly elections, overcoming the might of the BJP after a bitter campaign that had turned into a virtual duel between Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

By evening the trends were clear. Banerjee's Trinamool Congress had won or was leading in 216 (93 wins and 123 leads) out of 292 constituencies which went to the polls with some 48 per cent of the votes counted so far. Polling was countermanded in two constituencies after candidates fell victim to a raging Covid-19 pandemic. 'It's a victory for Bengal's people it's Banglar joy' (Bengal's victory),' Banerjee told her party workers, though her own victory from Nandigram seemed in doubt with conflicting reports of her loss by a narrow margin and a recount, neither of which were confirmed by the Election Commission.

Banerjee, set to be Chief Minister for a third term, however, stopped celebrations by her party workers and indicated that her first priority after the victory would be 'combatting the pandemic' which has been running amok in the state.

The TMC's main rival, the BJP was stymied in its ambition of winning the state with a total tally of wins and leads in just 74 constituencies (21 wins and 53 leads), with 38 per cent of the votes counted so far. It is far less than the 120 Assembly segments where it wrested a majority when it won 18 Lok Sabha seats in the 2019 general election. The actual results were a bitter let down for the BJP as Prime Minister Modi had staked his prestige in declaring his party was set to win over 200 seats after the first few phases of the unprecedented eight-phase election. Modi and his home minister Amit Shah campaigned extensively throughout the state spending almost every other day of a one-and-a-half month long bruising campaign trying to breach the Trinamool Congress' fortress Bengal.