The vote share of the Congress and the CPI(M), parties that once ruled West Bengal, fell further even as the Congress won two seats and the CPI(M) secured one in the assembly elections, results showed on Monday.
The Congress won Farakka and Raninagar in Murshidabad district. At Farakka, Motab Sheikh defeated the BJP’s Sunil Chowdhuri in a four-cornered contest involving the Congress, BJP, Trinamool Congress (TMC) and CPI(M). Shaikh secured 63,050 votes, while BJP’s Sunil Chowdhuri got 54,857 votes and TMC’s Amirul Islam got 47,256 votes, according to the Election Commission data. In Raninagar, Julfikar Ali defeated TMC’s Abdul Soumik Hossain by 2,701 votes, also in a multi-cornered contest. Ali got 79,423 votes, while Hossain was the runner-up with 76,722 votes, according to ECI data.
Sheikh’s candidature had earlier run into trouble after his name was deleted from the voters’ list during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise in the state.
He moved the Supreme Court, following which a court-mandated appellate tribunal directed the Election Commission to restore his name, allowing him to contest.
Vote share declines from 2021
Despite the wins, the Congress’s vote share dipped from 3.1% in 2021 to 2.97% this year.
The CPI(M) won one seat, with Md Mostafijur Rahaman emerging victorious from Domkal in Murshidabad. The party’s vote share declined from 4.8% in 2021 to 4.45% in this election.
High-profile Congress candidates, however, failed to secure victories. Senior leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, who contested from Baharampur, lost the seat. Chowdhury, a former MP, last contested an assembly election in 1996 and went on to win five consecutive Lok Sabha terms before losing in 2024 to TMC’s Yusuf Pathan, a cricketer-turned politician.
Malatipur, Baharampur See Close Fights
In Malda’s Malatipur, Mausam Noor, a two-time former Congress MP who recently returned to the party after a seven-year stint with the TMC, also lost. While Bhabanipur drew significant attention due to the contest between BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari and chief minister Mamata Banerjee, seats such as Baharampur in Murshidabad and Malatipur in Malda were also closely watched because of these high-profile Congress candidates.
Meanwhile, rebel TMC leader Humayun Kabir, who floated the Aam Janata Unnayan Party (AJUP), won two seats — Rejinagar and Nowda — both in Murshidabad.
“The Congress, the CPI(M) and the AJUP winning five seats in Murshidabad clearly shows the Muslim vote got divided,” political analyst Biswanath Chakraborty said.
