Set back in Junglemahal & North Bengal key reason for BJP’s defeat

By Saibal Gupta

Kolkata, May 4 (SocialNews.XYZ) Though BJP gained 74 seats compared to the last assembly election in 2016 but it was nowhere near its performance in the Lok Sabha polls where it not only got 18 seats but was ahead in 122 of the 294 assembly seats in the state.

Despite the saffron brigade's all-powerful national election machinery making a huge pitch in the state, the BJP failed to make an inroad into the heart of the people of West Bengal who gave them an opportunity to look into the eyes of Trinamool Congress in the last Lok Sabha polls.

A detailed analysis of the district wise result shows that though BJP has done reasonably better in the 56 seats of 7 North Bengal districts but has failed miserably in 146 seats in 7 districts in and around Kolkata and in 36 seats in the 3 districts in Central Bengal.

It though managed to retain some of its ground in Purulia, Bankura and East Midnapore but failed in the tribal districts like Jhargram and West Midnapore.

So far as North Bengal is concerned, BJP managed to get 30 out of the 54 seats allowing TMC the rest of the 24 seats.

The saffron brigade held back its ground in the four districts -- Coochbehar, Alipurduar, Jalpaiguri and Darjeeling getting 21 out of the total 26 seats but in the rest of the three districts, namely North Dinajpur, South Dinajpur and Malda they managed to get only 9 seats out of the total 28 seats.

Trinamool that failed miserably in the last Lok Sabha elections managed to regain some of its grounds and got 24 seats out of the total 54.

The seven districts in and around Kolkata -- Kolkata, South and North 24 Parganas, Howrah, Hooghly, Nadia and Murshidabad -- is an area where the Modi-Amit Shah combination failed to make a mark.

There are altogether 146 seats in this region of which Trinamool Congress got 125, leaving the all-powerful with only 20 seats and another seat has been bagged by the newly formed ISF -- an alliance of Sanjukta Morcha.

Nadia is the only district where BJP was ahead of TMC getting 9 out of the total 17 seats. In the rest of the districts including Murshidabad (20), North 24 Parganas (33), South 24 Parganas (31) Howrah (16), Hooghly (18) and Kolkata (11), TMC got 117 seats out of the total 129 seats leaving BJP with a meagre 11 seats.

In central Bengal out of the 36 seats spread across West Burdwan (9) East Burdwan (16) and Birbum (11), TMC got 32 seats leaving BJP with 4 -- one in Birbhum and three in West Burdwan.

Similarly, in Junglemahal that has 40 seats spread across four districts -- Jhargram (4), Purulia (9), Bankura (12) and West Midnapore (16), BJP managed to get 16 seats and TMC got the rest of the 24 seats.

Among the Junglemahal districts BJP is ahead of TMC in Bankura where they managed to get 8 of the total 12 seats.

Interestingly enough in the last Lok Sabha election BJP got all these 40 seats. However, BJP did comparatively better in East Burdwan where 7 of the 16 seats and TMC got the rest of the 9 seats.

Source: IANS