Kolkata: With polling in the second phase of the West Bengal State Assembly elections officially concluding at 6 pm, exit poll projections by TV channels are showing that the BJP has an edge. Voting for the 294-seat West Bengal Assembly took place in two phases on April 23 and today (April 29). The counting of votes will take place on May 4.
One of the first agencies to release their exit poll for the state, Peoples Pulse, gave 177-197 seats to the ruling TMC, with 95-110 for the BJP and one to Others. Matrize gave TMC 125-140, BJP 146-161, and Others 6-10.
P-MARQ gave 150-175 seats to the BJP, 118-138 to TMC and 2-6 seats to the Congress, while, according to Praja Poll Analytics, BJP will form the government in the state for the first time with 193 seats, with TMC coming a distant second, winning only 100 seats. They predict one seat
The TMC campaign was led by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, her nephew and sidekick Abhishek Banerjee, and a bevy of local leaders, including rising star and Lok Sabha MP Saayoni Ghosh, MP Mahua Moitra, Kolkata Mayor Firhad (Bobby) Hakim and others. Against this, Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the campaign for the state’s main opposition party, the BJP, in which, Union Cabinet Ministers like Amit Shah, BJP Chief Ministers of other states like Yogi Adityanath, and other central BJP bigwigs dominated over the party’s local leaders like Suvendu Adhikari.
A spirited campaign by youthful leaders was also seen in pockets by the once mighty Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M)-led Left Front’s alliance that includes CPI (ML) Liberation, with former student leaders Dipsita Dhar, Shatarup Ghosh and Minakshi Mukherjee the stand-out contestants.
In the 2021 Assembly polls, the TMC had won 215 seats, while the BJP won 77 seats, with one seat each won by the Indian Secular Front (ISF) and the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha.
