West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar, on Sunday, has invited Mamata Banerjee to form government in the state. The invitation has come even as a three-member team of the Trinamool Congress visited the Election Commission, demanding recounting of votes in Nandigram, where Banerjee lost to the BJP's Suvendu Adhikari.
This is for the first time in West Bengal that a chief minister loses election while the party wins. However, Banerjee is the obvious choice for the post of chief minister.
The TMC sources said she might stand from Kahradaha, near Kolkata, where the TMC candidate, who died a few days ago due to COVID-19, has won. There is also a possibility that she might ask her party leader Sovandeb Chattopadhyay to vacate her old seat, Bhabanipur.
From south to north and east to west, it is a clear victory for the TMC and Banerjee. However, the margin in more than 70 seats was less than 5,000 votes. Nearly 120 seats were won by less than 1,0000 votes.
A BJP candidate from Natabari of Cooch Behar won the seat by just 69 votes. Nisith Pramanik, the candidate, is also an MP.
The BJP had fielded four of its MPs in Bengal assembly elections. Three of them—Babul Supriyo, Locket Chatterjee and Swapan Dasgupta—have been defeated while only Pramanik managed to win. If Pramanik, also a former TMC MLA, decides to continue as MLA, then fresh election would be held to the Cooch Behar Lok Sabha seat.
The BJP's major rout came in North 24 Parganas, Hooghly, Howrah and Burdwan where the party had expected to sweep the polls to come to power. The party fared poorly in all these districts where both prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah had extensively campaigned. In Midnapore belt, where the saffron party had won seven out of 15 seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the party failed to impress.
Muslims in the state have voted in favour of Trinamool Congress en masse which was evident in the complete rout of Congress from its strongholds of Malda, Murshidabad and Uttar Dinajpur and Dakshin Dinajpur.
This would be the first time that the state would not have a Left or Congress MLA.
"This did not happen even at the time of British Raj,” said a CPI(M) leader, adding that it is time for the party to introspect.
BJP president Dilip Ghosh said Bengal would like his party to to be in opposition. "And we will continue to do that," said Ghosh, adding that real reason for its defeat would be found out soon.
"It was a battle between Bengal and Delhi politicians. So, this is a victory for Bengal in the end," said Subrata Mukherjee, outgoing cabinet minister of Bengal.