Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is on a landslide victory roll as her vote margin rose to 58,389 over her nearest rival in the Bhabanipur by-poll after the final twenty-first round of counting on Sunday afternoon, according to the Election Commission.
While her party Trinamool Congress is looking at a clean sweep as it is ahead by massive margins in Murshidabad's Samserganj and Jangipur assembly constituencies where elections were held Thursday.
Banerjee, the TMC candidate for the Bhabanipur seat in south Kolkata, secured 84,709 votes. Her nearest rival, BJP's Priyanka Tibrewal, secured 26,320 votes, while Srijib Biswas of the CPI(M) secured 4201 votes.
Although Banerjee claimed victory in a press conference outside her residence, the EC is yet to officially announce the results as they are yet to compile the votes secured through postal ballots.
"I want to thank the people of Bhabanipur, West Bengal and West Bengal, who were waiting for these results. The people of Bhabanipur have given a befitting reply to the conspiracy that was hatched to defeat me in Nandigram. I don't want to say much on a sub-judice matter. The counting is over, and we have won the seat by a margin of 58832 votes," she said.
The chief minister had earlier lost the Nandigram elections narrowly to her former aide Suvendu Adhikari, now leader of the opposition from the BJP in the state assembly. She has since filed a legal challenge to the election result.
After Banerjee's defeat in Nandigram, Sovandeb Chattopadhyay, a state minister, vacated the Bhabanipur seat to facilitate her return to the assembly from there.
The TMC had won the seat in the April-May assembly polls by a margin of around 28,000 votes.
The TMC is also ahead in Murshidabad's Samserganj and Jangipur constituencies, where votes are being counted for the assembly elections.
In Samserganj, TMC candidate Amirul Islam is leading by 25 195 votes after the twenty-two round of counting. He secured 91826 votes, while his nearest rival, Zaidur Rahaman of the Congress, got 66,631.
Jangipur's TMC nominee Jakir Hossain is leading by a massive margin of 64,529 votes after the twenty-one rounds of counting. Hossain secured 1,00,560 votes, and his nearest rival, BJP's Sujit Das, got 36, 031.
As reports of Banerjee's massive lead came in, TMC supporters hit streets across the state to celebrate.
On the other side, the state offices of the BJP and the CPI (M) wore a deserted look.
Meanwhile, the Election Commission has directed the state government to prohibit victory celebrations and processions to prevent any incident of post-poll violence.
Tibrewal, on Saturday night, wrote to the Acting Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court Rajesh Bindal, urging him to give orders to the police to take preventive steps to avoid incidents of violence after the declaration of the results.
