Kolkata: The Trinamool Congress looked poised to break the Congress-CPI(M) stranglehold in the border districts of Malda and Murshidabad.
There are 22 seats in Murshidabad, Bengal’s third largest district, and early trends have come in for 17 seats.
According to data from the Election Commission website, the Trinamool is leading in 14, while the BJP leads in three, including at Baharampur, the home turf of state Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury.
Of the 12 seats in Malda, the Trinamool is leading in six while BJP has taken a lead in the other six. The Congress-CPM-Indian Secular Front alliance is yet to open its account in the district.
The Muslim-dominated constituencies
The battlelines in Murshidabad were drawn primarily between the Trinamool Congress and the Sanjukta Morcha, an alliance of the Left parties, Congress and Indian Secular Front (ISF), barring a complicated political equation in six seats.
In three of these seats, the AIMIM is contesting while in the other three, the ISF fielded candidates against its alliance partner Congress.
In Murshidabad’s Domkol, with an 89 per cent Muslim population, the Trinamool leads the CPI(M) by around 2,000 votes. The CPI(M) has won nine straight assembly elections in Domkol starting 1977.
In Murshidabad’s Farakka, the Trinamool Congress is leading the BJP by 1,155 votes.
In Malda’s Habibpur, the BJP is ahead of the Trinamool Congress by 4,327 votes and in Murshidabad’s Hariharpara, the Trinamool leads the Congress by around 1,400 votes.
In Murshidabad’s Jalangi, the Trinamool has a lead over CPI(M) by a margin of around 4,000 votes. These are some of the strong hold seats of Congress and CPM, where Trinamool and BJP are leading.
However, experts claim that the scenario will change after at least round 10 of counting.
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