Isha Khan Choudhury emerged as the lone candidate to uphold the Congress flag as a Parliamentarian from Bengal, while the party’s stalwarts like Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury had to bite the dust.

Isha, who had contested from the Maldaha Dakshin seat, has won by a margin of around 1.28 lakh votes, with BJP’s Sreerupa Mitra Choudhury securing the second position and Shahnawaz Ali Raihan of the Trinamool Congress coming third.

The Congress has always won the Maldaha Dakshin seat since 2009 when the first election was held after the last delimitation.

“I am upset by Adhir Ranjan Choudhury’s defeat and thank the people of Malda for extending support to me,” Isha said after his win.

In Murshidabad district, Trinamool swept all three Lok Sabha seats, including Baharampur from where Adhir had won consecutively in five Parliament elections. This time, he lost to debutante Yusuf Pathan by around 85,000 votes.

“I accept the defeat and congratulate Yusuf Pathan,” said Adhir.

“However, the results show that in Bengal, it is tough to do politics with a secular mindset. Both the BJP and Trinamool are into polarisation politics,” added Adhir.

Political observers said, unlike Maldaha Dakshin, the Congress couldn’t secure Muslim votes in Baharampur where the community makes up around 61 per cent of the electorate.

“Trinamool, on the other hand, fielded Yusuf Pathan from the minority community. Nirmal Chandra Saha of the BJP acted as a spoiler for the Congress candidate as he secured 3.70 lakh votes,” said an observer.

Congress insiders said another reason for Adhir’s rout was his absence from the constituency in recent years.

Pathan, who was parachuted from Gujarat to Baharampur, said he would focus on development. “I was labelled as an outsider. But people stood by me,” he said.

Additional reporting by Soumya De Sarkar in Malda