Battleground Bengal: Did Congress-Left alliance facilitate BJP’s victory on 2 seats?

Kolkata, June 5 (IANS) At a time when it is believed that the Muslim electorate in West Bengal voted largely in favour of the Trinamool Congress in all the 29 Lok Sabha seats the party won in the state, there are two seats where the dent made by the Congress-Left Front alliance in the Muslim the vote bank might have sealed the BJP’s victory.

In both the constituencies — Maldaha Uttar in Malda district and Raiganj in North Dinajpur district — the Muslims constitute a substantial percentage of the voting population.

In Raiganj, BJP’s Kartick Chandra Paul bagged 5,60,897 votes against the 4,92,700 votes managed by Trinamool’s Krishna Kalyani.

However, Paul’s modest winning margin of 68,187 votes was facilitated to a great extent by the Left Front-supported Congress candidate Ali Imran Ramz a.k.a. Victor, who secured 2,63,272 votes.

Similarly, in Maldaha Uttar, BJP’s winning candidate Khagen Murmu secured 5,27,023 votes to defeat Trinamool’s Prasun Banerjee, who got 4,49,315 votes. However, Murmu’s winning margin of 77,708 votes was facilitated by the Left Front-supported Congress candidate Mostaque Alam, who secured 3,84,764 votes.

On Tuesday evening, after the trends showed the Trinamool winning big in West Bengal, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee told a section of the media that her party could have won a few more seats had the Congress and the CPI-M not extended clandestine support to support to the BJP.

Although the Chief Minister did not name any particular constituency, the results in Raiganj and Maldaha Uttar make it clear as to which seats she hinted at.

–IANS

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