Nandigram Election Result 2021: After quite a few twist and turns and significantly hullabaloo, the Election Commission yesterday declared Suvendu Adhikari victorious from the Nandigram seat which witnessed a higher-intensity contest in between Mamata Banerjee and her protege-turned-rival Adhikari. While some initial media reports recommended that Banerjee defeated Adhikari, although there was no confirmation from the Election Commission. After about half an hour, a different report came suggesting Adhikari as the winner. While Adhikari thanked the people today of Nandigram on Twitter, the TMC tweeted saying that counting is not more than and urged people today not to speculate. The EC took its time prior to declaring the outcome following conducting the mandatory VVPAT-EVM votes matching. It declared that Suvendu Adhikari outsmarted West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee by a margin of 1,956 votes. As per the Election Commission, Adhikari polled 1,10,764 votes although Banerjee garnered 1,08808 votes. CPI(M)’s Minakshi Mukherjee completed third with 6267 votes. The TMC had demanded recounting but the Returning Officer turned down the demand.
Now when the TMC has secured a landslide majority of 213 seats and its Chief Ministerial candidate, Mamata Banerjee, has herself lost the election, the Trinamool supremo demands to get re-elected to the West Bengal assembly from any other constituency. Interestingly, Banerjee moved to Nandigram and fielded Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay from her classic constituency Bhawanipore. Chattopadhyay won from the seat by a margin of 28,719 votes defeating his nearest rival Rudranil Ghosh of BJP.
Since there is no bi-caramel legislature arrangement in West Bengal like Bihar or Uttar Pradesh, the state does not have a Legislative Council, Banerjee will have no other choice than to contest assembly by-poll. Though any of the elected TMC MLA could effortlessly vacate his/her seat for Banerjee, she has two choices in front of her without the need of sacrificing any of the elected MLA.
Notably, there are 294 seats in the West Bengal assembly and only 292 went to the polls. Polling in two seats – Shamsherganj and Jangipur following the nominated candidates’ death. On the other hand, TMC candidate Kajal Sinha from the Khardaha assembly constituency which voted on April 22 in the sixth phase, had died due to COVID last week. Though he won the election by a margin of 28140 votes when the benefits have been announced yesterday, a by-poll has been necessitated due to his demise. One choice offered to Banerjee is that she can contest from any of these 3 constituencies.
It could be recalled that when Mamata Banerjee announced the TMC candidate list, she had indicated about the creation of the Legislative Council. Announcing the list in which she had excluded quite a few senior leaders such as these above 80 years, Banerjee had stated that following the TMC comes to energy, it would produce Vidhan Parishad or Legislative Council to accommodate senior and skilled leaders who have been excluded from the list. She can go for this second choice as properly but will be requiring Parliament’s approval for the very same as a Legislative Council could be produced or abolished by Parliament beneath Article 169 of the Indian constitution if the State Legislative Assembly passes a resolution for the very same by a majority of not significantly less than two-thirds of the members. For West Bengal, the two-thirds majority suggests 196 seats which will not be a challenge for the TMC as it has 213 members in the new assembly.