MillenniumPost
Bengal

TMC’s stunning performance achieved against all odds

TMC’s performance was all the more creditable as it contested the election on its own, unlike in 2011 when it had allied with the Congress. An analysis of the results indicate that TMC vote percentage also increased compared to the 2011 Assembly polls and the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

TMC secured 44.9 per cent of the total votes polled, compared to 39 per cent in 2011 and 39.03 per cent in 2014.

Political observers noted that the TMC supremo achieved the stunning victory despite several odds stacked against her - Saradha scam, the Narada sting expose and the Vivekananda flyover collapse.
Her slogan for development and various schemes for the common people caught the imagination of the voters.

Referring to the charges of corruption against her party, Banerjee had yesterday dubbed it as “propaganda by a section of media.” 

“There is no corruption in Bengal. Bengal is a corruption-free state. The people have rejected the allegation,” she had asserted.

On the other hand, the CPI(M)-led Left Front and Congress which had formed an alliance to fight the TMC have failed to put up a creditable show. CPI-M’s vote percentage fell to 19.7 per cent this time from 29.58 per cent in 2011 Assembly election. In 2014 Lok Sabha poll, the party had captured nearly 23 per cent vote.

The CPI-M this time won only 26 seats while its other Left Front constituents RSP won 3 seats, Forward Bloc-2 and CPI-1. The combined vote share of the Left Front was also reduced to nearly 24 per cent from 41 per cent in 2011. The Left Front had won 62 seats in 2011 Assembly polls, of which CPI(M) had won 40.

Mamata Banerjee had dubbed the coming together of CPI-M and Congress as the “greatest blunder” and said the people had rejected it. The Congress, however, benefited from the alliance and bettered its vote percentage this time to 12.3, compared to 9.09 per cent in 2011, when it had contested in alliance with TMC. In 2014 Lok Sabha poll, Congress’s vote share in the state was around 9.6 per cent.

Poll analysts said it appeared that the people rejected the alliance between the former rivals because “it had come together with a single agenda of defeating the TMC”. The leadership of the Congress and the the CPI-M dubbed it as a “people’s alliance”, but the results indicated that although there was transfer of votes from the Left to the Congress, the same was not true in case of Congress voters, they said.

The analysts said it was clear from the results in north Bengal where the Congress had a substantial vote bank. The TMC bagged eight of the nine seats in Cooch Behar, four of five seats in Alipurduar and six of the seven seats in Jalpaiguri in north Bengal. 
Next Story
Share it