The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) also managed to achieve a big victory in West Bengal’s Falta Assembly seat, which is known as the stronghold of Muslim voters. Lotus has bloomed here for the first time. However, the election results here are shocking in the sense that the position of Congress has become extremely weak. In this election, only the Muslim candidate won from the two seats that came to Congress’s account. TMC candidate Jahangir Khan, a prominent leader of the area, had withdrawn from the election even before voting, yet Congress remained at third place here.
The election result of Phalta seat is shocking because despite having 30 percent Muslim voters here, BJP managed to win in a one-sided contest. Not only this, only Hindu candidates remained at the first 2 positions. Congress’s Muslim candidate Abdur Razzaq Maula stood third and got only 4.8 percent i.e. 10,084 votes. BJP candidate Debangshu Panda managed to win the election while CPI-M candidate Shambhunath Kurmi stood second.
71 percent votes in BJP candidate’s account
Debangshu Panda got 71.2 percent of the total votes, while Shambhunath Kurmi got 40,645 votes (19.34 percent). Out of the total 2,10,192 votes polled, the two Muslim candidates from here got only 17,867 votes, out of which Jahangir Khan, who got 7,783 votes, had left the field even before the voting. However, despite Jahangir, one of the most popular faces of the election campaign, withdrawing from the field at the last moment, his name remained included in the electronic voting machine. He finished fourth and his deposit was also forfeited.
If we look at the last election results (year 2021), this seat had gone to Trinamool Congress. Then the party’s candidate Shankar Kumar Naskar won this seat by securing 56.7 votes. BJP’s Bidhan Parui was second by getting around 20 percent votes. Congress candidate Abdur Razzaq Maula had to finish third and got 7,452 votes. Maula has definitely got a little more vote share this time compared to 2021. But TMC candidates failed to take advantage of Jahangir’s withdrawal from the field. Earlier, TMC had won in 2011 and 2016 elections also.
TMC weak at organization level after elections!
TMC is still struggling to re-establish its organizational base after the historic change of power in West Bengal, but the deep mathematics behind the result of Phatala assembly seat is indicating that its impact can go far beyond any one assembly constituency. Falta seat was where TMC had withdrawn from the field even before the elections but Congress did not get the benefit of it. Voters here thought it better to vote for the Hindu candidate of Communist Party of India-M (CPI-M) instead of the Muslim candidate of Congress.
During the Lok Sabha elections about two years ago, in Phalta, which falls under the Diamond Harbor Lok Sabha seat, represented by Mamata Banerjee’s nephew and TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, the party had got around 89 per cent of the votes while Abhishek had a lead of around 1.68 lakh votes. But within 2 years it suffered a severe blow at the hands of BJP.
Rapid rise of BJP, crisis for TMC
The rise of BJP, which increased its vote share from 36.75 percent to more than 71 percent in the 2021 assembly elections, and TMC’s fall from nearly 56 percent to just 3.7 percent, indicate that the politically marginalized CPI-M is re-emerging. The party has secured about 20 percent votes here. The rise of CPI-M is a blow not only for TMC but also for Congress because the Left party is gradually emerging here.
Phalta’s election results show that BJP got the votes of united Hindu voters, and some part of minority voters also came to the party’s account. Whereas a large part of minority voters have moved towards CPI-M, which was with TMC since 2011. Although booth-wise voting patterns have not yet been revealed, it is being speculated that a large portion of minority voters have gone to CPI-M’s account.
Congress missed, and trust is increasing on left party
Should it be believed that the Left is slowly making a comeback? After the 2008 Panchayat elections, minority voters in the state gradually started moving away from the Left parties and towards TMC. The same trend was clearly visible in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, then in the 2011 Assembly elections, this class completely came together with Mamata Banerjee and the Left Front went far behind.
But the election results of Falta seat are indicating that on one hand BJP has got the full support of Hindu voters and on the other hand minority voters who are looking for another option instead of TMC are seen leaning towards CPI-M instead of Congress. In such a situation, Congress again seems to have failed to make inroads.
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