New Delhi: While the assembly election results for West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Assam, Kerala, and union territory Puducherry are yet to be finally declared by the Election Commission, the people’s mandate is clear in all of them.
The BJP is set to retain power in Assam and will be part of the government in Puducherry but failed to reach the majority mark in West Bengal. It also performed poorly in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, failing to win a single seat in the latter.
ThePrint looks at some of the biggest losers from these assembly polls.
West Bengal
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee may have won the war against BJP in the state but was locked in a fierce electoral battle in the Nandigram constituency with her former aide Suvendu Adhikari. After several twists and turns during the counting of votes, the Election Commission declared the BJP candidate as the winner late Sunday night. The ruling Trinamool Congress party, meanwhile, sent a memo to the EC demanding a recount of votes in the constituency.
BJP leader Babul Supriyo lost to TMC’s Aroop Biswas by over 49,000 votes from West Bengal’s Tollygunge seat. Supriyo, a singer-turned-politician, is the Minister of State for Environment, Forest and Climate Change, and is a two-time MP from Asansol.
Former Rajya Sabha MP and journalist Swapan Dasgupta, who was touted as a possible CM candidate for the BJP in West Bengal, lost to TMC’s Ramendu Sinharay by a margin of over 7,484 votes in the Tarakeswar constituency.
Locket Chatterjee, MP from Hooghly and currently the general secretary of the BJP in West Bengal, also lost TMC’s Asit Mazumder with a margin of 18,417 from Churchura.
JNU’s former student union leader, activist Aishe Ghosh from the Communist Party of India (Marxist), could only manage to win 14 per cent of the total votes in her maiden election from the Jamuria constituency.
Indranil Khan, the doctor who was detained for his social media posts highlighting the alleged shortage of protective gear in West Bengal’s hospitals, was fielded by the BJP from the Kasba constituency. Khan lost to TMC candidate Ahmed Jawed Khan by 63,622 votes.
Also read: Bengal has stopped BJP’s Ashvamedha yagna — and given India an opportunity
Assam and Tamil Nadu
Lurinjyoti Gogoi, Assam Jatiya Parishad’s star candidate and former All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) president, looked set to lose both the seats he contested. He is in third place in both the Duliajan and Naharkatia assembly seats.
In Tamil Nadu, actor-turned-politician Khushbu Sundar was trailing with a massive margin of more than 28,000 votes from the Thousands Light constituency in Chennai as of 11 pm Sunday night. Sundar had quit the Congress to join the BJP in 2020.
T.T.V. Dhinakaran, a close aide of former AIADMK chief Sasikala who was expelled from the party last year, had formed a party of his own — Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam (AMMK) to contest assembly polls. However, his party failed to secure a single seat and Dhinakaran lost to AIADMK’s Kadambur Raju by a margin of more than 1,000 votes.
In another major embarrassment for the BJP, senior leader and former union minister Pon Radhakrishnan was trailing by a margin of 1,11,491 votes against his rival Vijay Vasanth of the Congress in the Kanyakumari Lok Sabha constituency. The bypoll was necessitated after the death of sitting MLA and Congress veteran H. Vasantha Kumar last year due to Covid-19.
Kerala
BJP’s chief ministerial candidate E. Sreedharan, popularly known as ‘Metro Man’, lost the Palakkad constituency by 3,859 votes. Sreedharan was a last-minute recruit for the BJP.
K. Surendran, BJP’s state chief, faced double embarrassment after he lost both the seats he contested. Surendran lost the Konni constituency by 17,208 votes and the Manjeshwar constituency by less than 700 votes.
Also read: Governance, not ideology — how Kerala’s LDF managed a historic return to power under Pinarayi