NEWS
VIEWS
INTERVIEWS
CAMPAIGN TRAIL
ISSUES '98
MANIFESTOS
OVERHEARD
POLLING BOOTH
INDIA SPEAKS!
YEH HAI INDIA
CHAT
ELECTIONS '96

Mamata wins with record margin

The Bharatiya Janata Party made a major breakthrough in West Bengal politics when its state president Tapan Sikdar won over his Communist Party of India-Marxist rival in Dum Dum. This is the first time a BJP candidate is making it to the Lok Sabha from the state.

Meanwhile, Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee retained her South Calcutta seat with a record margin of 225,000-odd votes. She defeated her Marxist rival Prasanta Sur. The Trinamool Congress won all the three seats from Calcutta, besides Jadavpur, Barasat, Serampore and Howrah. Thus, it has snatched seven of the nine seats which the Congress had won last time.

Sikdar was elected over Nirmal Chatterjee from the constituency which is known as the 'Red Bastion'.

The Left Front, which held its own in rural Bengal but lost the capital city of Calcutta and its peripheries, won 33 seats: 23 from the CPI-M, four from the RevolutionarySocialist Party, three from the CPI and two of the Forward Bloc.

The BJP, which had a minimal strength in the state until this poll, has also fared fairly well in several other constituencies where its nominees came second to the winning candidates, all belonging to the Left Front, leaving the main opposition Congress in the background.

The party's seat adjustment with the newly formed Trinamool Congress paid dividends, paving the way for a third force in the state's politics which has had polarised voting pattern since 1952.

The voting pattern revealed that polling by anti-Left parties far exceeded the total of Left parties. Similarly, votes polled by the Congress and Trinamool candidates total more than those garnered by the Left candidates.

The front's winners included Union Home Minister Indrajit Gupta, Somnath Chatterjee, Geeta Mukherjee, Amar Roy Pradhan and Ajoy Mukherjee.

It is the tenth time in a row that Gupta is being returned to Parliament. Pradhan has the distinction of returning from Cooch Behar for seven consecutive terms. And former Union minister Ajit Kumar Panja is winning for the fifth time in a row.

UNI

Elections '98

Tell us what you think of this report