1. ‘Modi Modi’ Chants Resonate in BJP Office
The BJP’s stark rise in Bengal found fitting expression in the gritty bylane of 6 Muralidhar Sen Lane here on Thursday as the modest trappings of the two-storey party office were drowned out by celebrations in tandem with the day’s climbing numbers.
While most parts of south and central Calcutta were quiet on Thursday morning, drivers moving north around 10am could easily hear “Modi, Modi” as soon as they turned past the Central Metro station.
Inside the party office lane — 100m long and wide enough for a single car — the normally sedate university area was being rent with cries of “Har Har Modi, Ghar Ghar Modi” in anticipation of higher numbers.
(Source: The Telegraph)
2. Kalighat Street Wears Deserted Look
The police barricades were in place on Harish Chatterjee Street since Thursday morning but there were not many people trying to sneak through them.
Over the past decade, Harish Chatterjee Street had thousands of Trinamool supporters on result day, trying to get close to Mamata Banerjee’s home or catch the attention of a senior leader.
Thursday was different.
(Source: The Telegraph)
3. Time For TMC Reality Check As BJP Makes Inroads
With BJP garnering two-fifth of the Lok Sabha seats in Bengal, it is time for a reality check by Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool. Trinamool, which had set its sights on Delhi in the run-up to the polls, suffered stunning loss in multiple seats to a party, which had won only two seats in 2014.
If Thursday’s results are extrapolated from the trend at 294 assembly segments in the state, it could signal BJP’s inroad into nearly 120 seats. The results, however, threw up a couple of heartening factors: Trinamool has won all the seats in and around Kolkata and that it has more or less maintained its vote share, slipping by just 1.6% from the record 44.9% votes it polled at the state elections three years ago.
(Source: The Times Of India)
4. Future Scares Trinamool
Confusion over early trends made way for fear in the Trinamool Congress on Thursday, with the BJP not only breaching Mamata Banerjee’s Bengal bastion but stopping just a few seats short of her likely 22-seat tally in the state.
The saffron surge — Narendra Modi’s party looks set to win 18 seats — has prompted hysterical calculations in Trinamool camp on what lies next. Although not one prominent Trinamool leader was willing to go on record on the results, many admitted in private that the party was fearing a defeat in the 2021 Assembly elections.
(Source: The Telegraph)
5. BJP Bags 7 Out Of North Bengal’s 8
North Bengal was draped in saffron on Thursday, swept up in a Narendra Modi wave that took the BJP to victories in seven of the region’s eight Lok Sabha seats and two of three Assembly bypolls held with the general election.
The only Lok Sabha seat where the BJP could not come up trumps was Malda South, which the Congress retained for the third time in a neck-and-neck contest.
While Trinamool lost all its four seats in north Bengal, the Congress ceded one of its two seats and the Left its sole seat in the region.
(Source: The Telegraph)
6. With 18 Seats And 40% Vote Share, BJP Snaps At TMC Heels In Bengal
Bengal’s voters have moved decisively towards a bipolar political configuration, giving theBJPleads in 18 of 42 Lok Sabha seats from the state and, much more importantly, giving the saffron party a clear mandate to take on the Trinamool in the 2021state elections.
The BJP got 40.2% of the votes (counted till 9pm), up from 17% in the 2014 LS polls and only 3.1% less than Trinamool’s 43.3% this time. Interestingly, the Trinamool vote share went up by 3.6% (from its 2014 share of 39.7%) but that gain got swept away by the en-masse consolidation of anti-Trinamool votes in the BJP’s favour.
(Source: The Times Of India)
7. Bypolls Spring BJP Surprise In 2 Assembly Constituencies
Assembly bypolls across eight constituencies in the state threw up predictable winners barring two where the BJP sprung a surprise. While Pawan Kumar Singh, son of defector Arjun Singh who won the Barrackpore Lok Sabha seat, upstaged Trinamool veteran Madan Mitra at Bhatpara, Niraj Zimba beat Benoy Tamang, who fought as an independent candidate, in Darjeeling. Zimba is also a GNLF leader.
Arjun Singh’s home turf Bhatpara was the only assembly segment in the Barrackpore seat where BJP had a lead over Trinamool by around 2,500 votes. BJP, however, managed to increase at least 6,000 votes in each segment, upping the overall vote share by18.3%.
In the Darjeeling bypolls, Zimba had a big margin and secured more than 60% of the votes. He termed the victory margin a miracle and said the people had not forgotten the agitation of 2017 and “the state government’s atrocities”.
(Source: The Times Of India)
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