BJP ahead in Balurghat, glare on VVPAT tally

BALURGHAT: BJP candidate from Balurghat LS seat Dr Sukanta Majumdar is ahead of Trinamool Congress candidate Arpita Ghosh by about 30,000 votes, an official source of district administration said. According to the source, the final result will only be declared after tallying of Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips as per guideline of Election Commission of India.

"Probably we will be able to declare the result late on Thursday night," said an official. The poll was conducted for the Balurghat seat on April 23.

In the last 2014 LS poll, Ghosh had won the Balurghat seat with a huge margin of 1,06,964 votes by defeating Left nominated RSP candidate Bimalendu Sarkar. BJP's Biswapriya Roy Choudhury had secured third position.

It is clear from the counting trend that the BJP captured the vote banks of Left Front. In 2009, RSP's vote share was 44.38 percent and the Trinamool's vote share was 43.79 percent. In 2014, Ghosh's vote share was 38.53 percent, a decline of 5.26 percent was witnessed if compared to the 2009 vote share. RSP's vote share reduced drastically by 15.91 percent from 44.38 percent in 2014. The BJP's vote share increased from 6.82 percent in 2009 to 20.98 percent in 2014.

In 2019, the increasing trend of BJP's vote share with the declining vote share of RSP continued.