BJP may see gains in Bengal, Trinamool tally likely to shrink
NEW DELHI/KOLKATA: West Bengal, the third-largest electoral state in India, may see a boost for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), several exit polls suggested on Sunday, bearing out what leaders of the party have been claiming.
India Today-axis predicted the BJP might get between 19 and 23 seats, the highest tally predicted for the BJP in a state where it currently has just two seats. Times NOW-VMR and Republic TV C-voter pegged the NDA tally at 11 while ABP News-nielsen’s exit poll gave 16 seats to the BJP.
West Bengal, which sends 42 representatives to Parliament, has seen an intense battle between the BJP and the Trinamool Congress (TMC), which has 34 representatives in the outgoing Lok Sabha. Last year’s panchayat polls made it evident that the BJP was the second strongest political force in the state after the TMC. Ahead of the elections, several BJP leaders expressed the hope that the state would help it compensate for some of the losses it could suffer in the Hindi heartland which it swept in 2014.
If the exit polls have got it right, the TMC, the Left Front, and the Congress will all suffer losses in West Bengal. The most optimistic estimate of the TMC’S seats is 29, by Republic TV C-voter. The least is 19-22 by the India Todayaxis exit poll. Times NOW-VMR and ABP News-nielsen pegged Trinamool’s seats at 28 and 24 respectively. In the current Lok Sabha, Trinamool was the second-largest opposition party after the Congress. The party was also hoping to emerge as a kingmaker in 2019. Banerjee, however, rejected the exit polls as “gossip”. “The predictions are a ploy to create a situation in which opposition leaders will face difficulty in holding talks on coalition. And, it is also a strategy to raise share prices so that those who provided BJP with funds can get their money back. I request people in all states to keep vigil on places where EVM machines are kept. I suspect that these will be replaced so that the final figures tally with these projections,” said Banerjee.
Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh also rejected the exit polls but for another reason altogether. He said, “I think the exit poll projections on Bengal are not entirely correct. Under no circumstance will we get less than 23 seats. We will surely win more seats than the Trinamool Congress.”
The exit polls portray a sad picture of the CPI(M)-LED Left parties, who are fighting for survival in their erstwhile bastion. Three exit polls give the Left zero seats in the state, a first since Independence, and one poll gives it just one seat. The Left parties ruled Bengal for 34 years till Banerjee ousted them in 2011. The Congress, too, may see a decline from its present tally of four seats. All the exit polls predicted Congress’s tally between zero to 2.