Khela Over: Mamata Is Didi Beyond Bengal

Wheelchair Jams BJP Juggernaut With 2nd 2/3rd Majority In Row

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 Prime Minister Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah’s leadership, on Fort Bengal.

Apart from a third straight term, Didi looked set (at the time of going to press) to improve upon her very impressive 211-seat tally in 2016, belying the dominant national narrative of either a BJP victory or a close contest, and shaming pollsters. It at once bolstered her credentials as claimant to the leadership of the next antiBJP alliance and exposed the limits of BJP in geographies defined by stubborn regional identities and demographies, hindering saffron dreams of countrywide dominance.

To be sure, Banerjee was not the only victor on Sunday. In Tamil Nadu, M K Stalin led DMK to victory, although smaller than expected, after a decade-long spell in the opposition. In Kerala, incumbent Pinarayi Vijayan defied the revolving-door rhythm of state politics to pull off a landslide for CPM — a feat that stood out also because of the rout fellow comrades suffered in Bengal.

The results were marked by slow counting. As of 11.15pm on Sunday, the EC was yet to declare 163 of 234 results in Tamil Nadu, 36 of 126 results in Assam, three of 140 in Kerala, three of 30 in Puducherry and 39 of 292 in West Bengal. The slow pace of results being declared meant that TOI was unable to process the results for final vote shares, though the broad trends were unlikely to change very much in the final stages of counting.