Saumitra Khan, a winning BJP candidate from Bishnupur said today that there would be ‘no contest’ with the TMC in the West Bengal Assembly elections as they would only be able to win a maximum of 60 seats.
Saumitra Khan,winning BJP candidate from Bishnupur: There will be no contest with TMC in West Bengal assembly elections as they will only be able to win a maximum of 60 seats. pic.twitter.com/o1WuCgyyvl
— ANI (@ANI) May 25, 2019
Saumitra Khan was a Member of Parliament from the Trinamool Congress and had joined the BJP in January 2019. Several leaders of the TMC have been defecting from the party recently. An ex-TMC leader, Arjun Singh who had joined the BJP had earlier said that about a 100 TMC MLAs were willing to join the BJP. The next assembly elections in West Bengal are due in 2021.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP gave the TMC a tough fight by managing to win 18 seats, a massive improvement from the 2014 polls where they won only 2 seats. The TMC on the other had won 22 seats out of the 42 seats in the state, leaving Congress with just two seats.
Post the announcements of elections results, there were also reports of many TMC MLAs willing to switch to BJP. PM Modi, while speaking at a rally in Bengal, had earlier declared that 40 TMC MLAs are in touch with the BJP.
Elections in West Bengal have never been free from violence. TMC goons had attacked Union Minister Babu Supriyo and vandalised his car on April 29. Following which, a BJP delegation had approached the Election Commission for the alleged booth capturing by the TMC workers.
Following the reports of violence in the Phase 4 elections, the Election Commission, as a preventive measure, had decided to deploy 100 % by central forces in all the polling booths in the fifth phase of polls.
Phase 5 of Elections in West Bengal was also replete with reports of violence, rigging and polling malpractices. Due to the violence in the state, the Election Commission had to take an unprecedented step of cutting short the election campaigning for the seventh phase of Lok Sabha election.
Despite the efforts of the EC, there were reports of violence in the last phase of the election. Many BJP leaders, especially ground-level workers have been attacked and killed in the state.
