West Bengal Election Result 2021 Live updates: Mamata’s claim to lead oppn bloc against BJP stronger than ever

From the trends that emerged, Banerjee clearly outshone all others. It had to do, in almost equal measure, with the scale of her victory, the nature of opposition, and the tactics she deployed. At midnight, TMC had either won or was leading in about 215 of the 294 seats up for grabs, leaving BJP far behind with 75. The score looked more impressive considering she posted it in the face of a ferocious saffron challenge. Encouraged by their success in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls when BJP stunned Banerjee by winning 18 of the 42 seats, BJP poured enormous energy and resources into the Bengal campaign in a determined bid to gain control of a state that remains a pocket of defiant resistance.

The most watched contest was Bengal where the scale of TMC’s win has buried BJP’s hopes. In Stalin, DMK has found a new icon and a successor to M Karunanidhi. Vijayan’s dominance over Kerala and his party is sealed with the win as several seniors will no longer pose a challenge to him. Elsewhere, the MVA government in Maharashtra is led by Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena, a regional entity.

Mamata Banerjee on Sunday appeared to be on course to win another two-thirds majority in what was billed as the mother of all state electoral battles, decisively beating back BJP’s all-out assault led by PM Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah, on Fort Bengal.

None of the exit polls had predicted a landslide for Mamata Benerjee-led Trinamool Congress in West Bengal. Today’s Chanakya had predicted the maximum 195 seats for the ruling party, which was much less than the final figure that the TMC touched late on Sunday night.

From a late evening in June 2019, when he took poll strategist Prashant Kishor to meet Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee to accompanying her on Sunday evening to the Kalighat temple to offer puja after Trinamool’s big win, Abhishek Banerjee has come a long way, playing a key role in the party’s success.

Battleground Nandigram produced an epic poll confrontation on Sunday as Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee and former aide Suvendu Adhikari engaged in an attritional contest that went down to the wire, with both candidates alternatively leading and trailing through each round of counting.

The BJP on Sunday alleged that one of its party offices in Hooghly district was set on fire, and some of its leaders, including Suvendu Adhikari, were heckled by TMC activists in other parts of the state, after the poll results showed that the Mamata Banerjee camp was set to retain power in Bengal.