Trinamool Congress in West Bengal, DMK in Tamil Nadu, and LDF in Kerala: May 2 saw a surprising rise in power of non-BJP aligned parties. The BJP, on the other hand, was able to retain Assam and wrest Puducherry from the Congress. Most surprising was the result from Bengal – where Mamata Banerjee-led TMC registered a thumping victory with 210 seats, proving all exit polls wrong, that have expected it to be a neck in neck contest.
The saffron party, which had put in all its might and will, could not even touch the three-digits. While the Left and Congress alliance, named as Sanyukta Morcha, was decimated in the state.
However, TMC’s win saw a sour moment as party chief Mamata Banerjee could not save her own seat of Nandigram. She was handed defeat by her old aide Suvendu Adhikari. Earlier, it was reported that Mamata had won the victory in a nail-bitter finish, but later, Adhikari emerged as the winner by nearly 1,700 votes.
All eyes were on West Bengal elections as BJP turned things into a huge political battleground amid the second wave of Covid-19. BJP fielded its star campaigners like prime minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, party chief JP Nadda, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath along with many local leaders.
Read about how BJP makes its return in Assam.
Political pundits believe that it was a huge loss for BJP because of the unprecedented amount of resources and power invested in the state by the ruling party. Putting COVID-19 protocols aside and millions of people’s lives at stake during the peak time of Coronavirus, BJP took the Bengal polls like a general election.
According to ECI, BJP, which has jumped to 77 seats from 3 in 2016, has seen a slight dip in vote sharing by nearly 3 percent from its 40.30 percent votes in the 2019 general election. The vote share of the BJP stood at 37.70 percent in this election.
According to reports, at least 36 candidates who joined BJP from TMC also lost the election.
