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West Bengal outcome may realign New Delhi-Kolkata-Dhaka tiesKOLKATA: On a day Trinamool was dismantled, the hammer blow for the party landed at the fag end – with Mamata Banerjee losing her bastion of Bhabanipur to BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari by 15,105 votes.For 15 years, it had been her home turf, a constituency she shaped and returned to whenever the ground shifted beneath her, and its loss is the most personal defeat of her political career.Bhabanipur has been TMC territory since 2011, when Subrata Bakshi won it for the party before vacating the seat so Mamata could enter the assembly after becoming CM. She won the seat in 2011, 2016, and again in a 2021 bypoll by a staggering 58,835 votes, her largest ever margin in the constituency.
Election Results 2026
In the 2021 general elections, she had chosen to contest from Nandigram and lost narrowly to Suvendu. TMC’s Sovandeb Chattopadhyay, who had won Bhabanipur, resigned to make way for her. But in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, TMC’s lead in Bhabanipur shrank to just over 8,000 votes, signalling an already dwindling base for the TMC chief.Monday’s defeat is Mamata’s second successive loss to Suvendu. In 2021, the CM had taken the battle to his home turf. This time around, he marched into her bastion.Though early trends favoured Suvendu, Mamata had bounced back after the third round, leading by over 19,000 votes at one point – triggering murmurs that the contest might tilt in her favour after all. But Suvendu mounted a rapid comeback.”We have waited years for this moment. People have voted for change and you can see that energy on the streets today,” said Kamal Jindal, a BJP supporter near the counting centre, who was distributing sweets. Another supporter, Nikita Agarwal, added, “This is not just a victory, it is a message. Bengal wanted development and today that voice was finally heard.”Mamata claimed she was defeated by force, and that the election was rigged and looted by BJP. She said she would soon return.Tension escalated when TMC alleged BJP workers assaulted their counting agentsand forced them out. Mamata rushed to the venue. As her convoy reached Sakhawat Memorial High School, the counting centre, BJP supporters erupted in chants of “thief, thief” and “go back”. She stayed there till 8pm before being escorted out by central forces.”We don’t have words,” said one TMC worker, slowly unpinning the party symbol from his shirt. Go to Source
