Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Sunday made a roaring comeback to the State Assembly by defeating her nearest rival Priyanka Tibrewal by a record-breaking margin of more than 58,000 votes.
This is about 6,000 more than the 2011 margin when she rode an anti-CPI(M) wave to oust the mighty Left Front (LF) from power after more than three decades.
While the TMC polled 71.9 per cent votes the BJP got 22 per cent. The LF ended a poor third with 3.58 per cent.
A jubilant Mamata, who lost the Nandigram elections by a wafer-thin margin of 1,900 votes said, “Though Bhawanipore is a very small place it has a very wide circumference … it will surely set an example for India and will have very big implications.”
While the TMC had trailed the BJP from Bhawanipore Assembly segment — which is a part of South Kolkata parliamentary seat — by more than 3,000 votes in the 2019 general elections, the party had registered a superb win in the 2021 Assembly elections when State Minister Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay defeated his BJP rival by more than 26,000 votes.
