Cricketer-turned-politician Yusuf Pathan of the Trinamool Congress won the Baharampur Lok Sabha constituency in West Bengal with a margin of more than 85,000 votes, defeating Congress candidate Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury.
Baharampur was among the few remaining Congress strongholds in West Bengal, with Chowdhury having represented the constituency continuously since 1999. Pathan secured 5,24,516 votes while Chowdhury, who was the Congress’s leader in the Lok Sabha, got 4,39,494 votes.
The Lok Sabha election in West Bengal, which has 42 seats, was held in seven phases. The polls in the state were marred by sporadic incidents of violence.
The state saw a three-cornered contest between the Trinamool Congress, the BJP and the Congress-Left alliance.
While the Trinamool Congress and the Congress contested against each other in the state, they are part of the Opposition INDIA bloc at the national level. The Communist Party of India (Marxist), the largest party in the Left Front, is also part of the Opposition alliance.
The 2019 parliamentary election marked a tectonic shift in West Bengal politics, with the BJP emerging as the principal opposition to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, displacing the Left Front.
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