Mamata Banerjee vs Suvendu Adhikari: Bhabanipur sees BJP leading in early trends | India News
New Delhi: All eyes are on the fight between the two Chief Minister of West Bengal Mamata Banerjee And Assembly Opposition Leader Subhendu Adhikari counting votes on Monday.all over india Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief Banerjee contested again from the Bhavanipur seat, which went to polls in the second phase on April 29. Meanwhile, Adhikari campaigned as a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate for both Nandigram and Bhavanipur. Representatives of BJP, TMC, CONG, CPM, SUCI(C), BNARP, IND are contesting in Bhavanipur.As per the initial trends, BJP incumbent is ahead in Bhavanipur. In 2021, Banerjee contested against Adhikari on her home turf, Nandigram. He lost to the BJP leader by 1,956 votes. Now, Adhikari is facing Banerjee in Bhavanipur, the home constituency of the Chief Minister. Bhavanipur has long been a stronghold of Banerjee. He has represented the constituency as an MLA since 2011 and has never lost an election there. After becoming Chief Minister in 2011, he won the decisive by-election from Bhavanipur by 54,213 votes.In 2016, her margin narrowed as she defeated the Left-backed Congress candidate Deepa Dashmunsi by 25,301 votes, while the BJP got 26,299 votes.In 2021, TMC retained Bhavanipur, with Shovandev Chattopadhyay defeating BJP’s Rudranil Ghosh by 28,719 votes. BJP’s vote share increased to 35.2%, indicating a growing presence.Banerjee later returned to contest the Bhavanipur by-election, winning by 58,835 votes and securing her third term as Chief Minister.The electorate of Bhavanipur also changed, with 41,068 names deleted from the list, reducing the voter base by nearly 20% to around 1.6 lakh. An analysis by Souptik Halder with Ashin Chakraborty and Sabir Ahmed found that 56.7% of the voters flagged in the ‘under adjudication’ category are Muslims compared to their share of 20% in the constituency’s population as per the 2011 census.Earlier findings showed that Muslims accounted for 22.7% of voters identified as ‘absent, transferred, or dead/duplicate’ (ASDD), with an ‘unmapped’ share of around 26%, roughly in line with their population share. However, it rose sharply to 52% on the ‘logical inconsistency’ list.According to Chakraborty, despite Bhavanipur being a mixed-community constituency, Muslims are disproportionately represented among those scrutinised. Halder added that booth-wise analysis of 2021 and 2024 data suggests that if voters are unable to vote under the ruling, the TMC’s winning margin could shrink significantly and even disappear in some booths.
