Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party has won West Bengal for the first time in history, ending Mamata Banerjee’s 15-year rule and dealing a personal blow to the chief minister, who was defeated in her own Bhabanipur seat by BJP rival Suvendu Adhikari by more than 15,000 votes.
Adhikari thanked “every Hindu Sanatani who voted for the BJP” and branded Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress a “pro-Muslim party”.
The victory carries deep symbolic weight: Bengal was the home state of Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, the founder of the BJP’s ideological forerunner.
The win followed a controversial Special Intensive Revision of voter rolls that removed nine million people, almost 12 percent of the state’s electorate, before polling.
Bengal’s defence of its Muslim minority has long been the principal counterweight to Modi’s Hindu nationalist project.
That is now over.
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