Even though there has been a sharp decline in the number of Trinamool Congress seats in Bengal, six of the party’s sitting MPs managed to retain their seats with much higher vote margins compared to the 2014 Lok Sabha election results.
The highest vote margin has been registered by chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s nephew and Diamond Harbour candidate Abhishek Banerjee. Mr Banerjee won with a whopping margin of 3,20,594 votes compared to the 71,298 vote margin that he got in 2014.
Defeating his nearest rival, Nilanjan Roy of BJP, he got 7,91,127 votes, which is 56.15 per cent of the total votes cast.
Joynagar MP Pratima Mondal comes next, with a winning margin of 3,16,775 votes compared to 1,08,384 vote margin that she got last time. Ms Mondal defeated BJP’s Ashok Kandary by getting 7,61,202 votes or 56.13 per cent of total votes cast.
Mathurapur MP Choudhury Mohan Jatua retained his seat with a margin of 2,03,974 votes while in 2014 he had a margin of 1,38,768 votes. He got 51.84 per cent votes, defeating BJP’s Shyama Prasad Haldar.
Both the sitting MPs of Kolkata North and Kolkata South, Sudip Bandopadhyay and Mala Roy, not only retained their seats but increased their winning margins significantly. Mr Bandopadhyay won with a margin of 1,27,095 votes while in 2014 his victory margin was only 96,226. Similarly, Mrs Roy has achieved a victory margin of 1,55,192 votes compared to her previous winning margin of 1,36,339. Mr Bandopadhyay had bagged 4,74,891 votes (49.96 per cent), defeating BJP candidate Rahul Sinha while Mrs Roy got 5,73,119 votes (47.5 per cent) to defeat BJP’s Chandra Kumar Bose.
Birbhum sitting MP and actress Satabdi Roy has achieved a winning margin of 88,924 votes compared to 67,263 that was registered last time. She got 45.13 per cent of the total vote to defeat BJP’s Dudh Kumar Mondal.
Though the number of Trinamool seats has dipped from 34 to 22 this time, there has been a spike in the vote share from 39.05 to 43.4 per cent which is reflected in the winning margins of some candidates.
Meanwhile, some of the sitting MPs who shifted parties have put up a poor show, either being defeated or their voting margins dipping.
Among those defeated were Trinamool Congress candidate of Malda North, Mausam Noor, who had won the seat on a Congress ticket in 2014 and defected to Trinamool earler this year and BJP’s Jadavpur candidate Anupam Hazra, who had won the Bolpur seat in 2014 on a TMC ticket with a huge margin of 2,36,112 votes.
BJP candidate of Bishnupur Saumitra Khan, who defected from Trinamool earlier this year, has managed to win but his victory margin has dipped from 1,49,685 in 2014 to 78,047.
On the other hand, most of the Tollywood stars ~ Babul Supriyo, Dev, Nusrat Jahan, Mimi Chakraborty, Satabdi Roy and Locket Chatterjee ~ scripted huge victories in their respective constituencies.
Trinamool candidates and film stars Nusrat Jahan and Mimi Chakraborty secured huge victories in Basirhat and Jadavpur constituencies with victory margins of 3,50,369 and 2,95,239 respectively.
Sitting MPs actor Dev and actress Satabdi Roy have also managed to retain their seats in Ghatal and Birbhum comfortably.
Moon Moon Sen, referred to as the giant killer in the 2014 elections, was the TMC Tollywood brigade’s only failure, having lost against BJP’s Babul Supriyo in Asansol.
Another actress, BJP’s Locket Chatterjee, defeated Trinamul’s Ratna De (Nag) by 73,362 votes in Hooghly.