The vote share of the Congress and the Communist Party of India (Maoist), the parties that once ruled West Bengal, fell further even as the Congress won two seats and the CPI (Maoist) bagged one seat in the Assembly elections, results showed on Monday.
The Congress won Farakka and Raninagar in Murshidabad district. In Farakka, Mutaib Sheikh defeated Sunil Chowdhury of the BJP in a four-way contest involving Congress, BJP, Trinamool Congress (TMC) and CPI(M). Sheikh got 63,050 votes, while Sunil Chaudhary of the Bharatiya Janata Party got 54,857 votes and Amirul Islam of TMC got 47,256 votes, according to Election Commission data. In Rannagar, he defeated TMC’s Zulfiqar Ali Abdul Samik Hussain by 2,701 votes, also in a multi-cornered contest. Ali received 79,423 votes, while Hussein came in second place with 76,722 votes, according to data from the International Electoral Federation.
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Sheikh’s candidacy had earlier faced problems after his name was removed from the voters’ list during the Special Intensive Review (SIR) process in the state.
He moved the Supreme Court, after which a court-mandated appeals court ordered the Election Commission to reinstate his name, allowing him to compete.
Voting share declines from 2021
Despite the victories, vote share in Congress fell from 3.1% in 2021 to 2.97% this year.
The CPI (Maoist) won one seat, with Mohammad Mustafaur Rahman Rahman emerging victorious from Domkal in Murshidabad. The party’s share of the vote fell from 4.8% in 2021 to 4.45% in this election.
But the leading candidates for Congress failed to achieve victories. Senior leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, who contested from Baharampur, lost the seat. Chowdhury, a former Member of Parliament, last contested the Assembly elections in 1996 and went on to win five consecutive terms in the Lok Sabha before losing in 2024 to TMC’s Yusuf Pathan, a cricketer-turned-politician.
Read also: Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury: a stalwart of Congress politics in Bengal | 5 facts about him
Malatipur, Baharampur see nearby battles
In Malatipur in Malda, Mausam Noor, a two-time former Congress MP who recently returned to the party after seven years with the TMC, also lost. While Bhabanipur has drawn huge attention due to the contest between BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, seats like Baharampur in Murshidabad and Malatipur in Malda have also been closely watched due to these senior Congress candidates.
Meanwhile, rebel TMC leader Humayun Kabir, who floated the Aam Janata Unnayan Party (AJUP), won two seats – Reginagar and Noda – both in Murshidabad.
Political analyst Biswanath Chakraborty said: “The Congress, Communist Party of India and RJD winning five seats in Murshidabad clearly shows the division of Muslim votes.”
