• Trinamul leads in 29 seats, BJP down to 12

• Shatrughan Sinha wins by 63,000 votes, ABP Ananda

• Abhishek Banerjee leads by 7,01,563 votes
  

• BJP state president Sukanta Mazumdar leads by 9905 votes in Balurghat

• Trinamul's Kaliapada Soren leads by 1,10,000 votes in Jhargram

• Yusuf Pathan leads by 72,000 votes from Berhampore

Even before the poll bugle was sounded, Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee had asserted she alone would be enough to stop the BJP juggernaut in Bengal. On Tuesday, Didi seems to be well on way to prove it.

Till 2.25 pm, the Trinamul was leading in 29 of the 42 Lok Sabha seats in the state, while the principal Opposition party, the BJP, the clear favourite of pollsters, barely touched double figures, down to 12 from its 2019 tally of 18.

An injured and ailing Mamata had led the campaign from the front with her focus on the welfare schemes that her government had launched in the last three years, especially the Lakshmir Bhandar cash incentive scheme.

Ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, the Mamata government had hiked the monthly dole from Rs 500 to Rs 1000 for women in the general category, while for those in the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe categories the amount was revised from Rs 1,000 to Rs 1,200.

Throughout the campaign in Bengal, Narendra Modi and other BJP leaders had kept the focus on the allegations of corruption against the Trinamul, citing the teachers’ recruitment scam and coal and cattle smuggling. Some of the party’s leaders are behind bars.

Accusations of sexual assault on women in the island of Sandeshkhali in North 24-Parganas too failed to cut much ice with the voters as the Trinamul nominee, Haji Nurul Islam, was ahead with a comfortable margin of 1,93,781 votes from Basirhat, of which Sandeshkhali is a part.

A rookie politician like former cricketer Yusuf Pathan was on the way to trump Congress’s Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury who has never lost the seat of Berhampore since his first win in 1998.

Even the firebrand Mahua Moitra who was believed to be in trouble with her party colleagues is cruising to a victory with a lead of 45,340 votes from Krishnagar.

The sorry turnout for the BJP also puts a question mark on the future of Bengal’s leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari who had turned the political battle into a personal one.

In Adhikari’s home turf Contai, his younger brother Soumendu is now leading by 3,117 votes to the Trinamul’s Uttam Barik. The only consolation for Adhikari is that in neighbouring Tamluk, the former Calcutta high court judge Abhijit Ganguly was leading by 10,345 votes.

The Left and the Congress which went into the polls with an alliance ended up worse than where they were in 2019. The CPM remains at zero, while the Congress’ Isha Khan Chowdhury from the Malda South constituency is the last man standing.