There will be 21 rounds of counting of votes in Bhawanipur assembly constituency. (file)
Kolkata:
Votes will be counted today for the by-election in Bhabanipur, the South Kolkata legislative constituency Mamata Banerjee has to win to remain the Chief Minister of West Bengal, losing the seat she had contested in the state elections earlier this year. Was.
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The chief minister had to contest the by-election because she could not win from Nandigram despite her own party’s landslide victory in the assembly elections held in March-April. The BJP put up a tough fight there through its recruit Suvendu Adhikari, who had turned an enemy from the chief minister’s confidante.
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While the Trinamool Congress has claimed that the party chief will win by a margin of over 50,000 votes, the BJP, which fielded 41-year-old greenhorned Priyanka Tibrewal, claimed it had given a “very good fight”.
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The counting of votes will begin at 8 am today and the initial trends are expected to turn down in the first hour itself. There will be 21 rounds of counting of votes in Bhawanipur assembly constituency.
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The Election Commission has put in place a three-tier security arrangement, in which 24 companies of central forces have been called in and they have already been deployed at the counting centre.
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The election commission official said over 57 per cent turnout was recorded in the polling on Thursday, the constituency where more than three lakh people were eligible to vote.
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Mamata Banerjee will have to win elections to enter the state assembly before the end of her first six months as chief minister in this term.
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The bypoll in Bhawanipore was called following the resignation of leader of Ms Banerjee’s party, Shobhandeb Chattopadhyay, who had stepped down to make way for her.
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The BJP tried its best to ensure another humiliation for the chief minister, with many believing that the contest may not be easy for her, even if she lives there – her Kalighat residence in the constituency. is located – and he had won the seat twice in 2011 and 2016.
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BJP’s Priyanka Tibrewal has also been a resident of the locality for a long time. Though she lost the recent assembly elections and the 2015 municipal elections as well, the Calcutta High Court lawyer has turned a high profile by being one of the petitioners in the post-election violence case against the state government.
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Apart from Bhabnipur, votes will also be counted in two other constituencies – Samserganj and Jangipur seats in Murshidabad which recorded 79.92 per cent and 77.63 per cent turnout respectively. The election was canceled after the death of two candidates at these places.
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