Statesman News Service
MALDA, 17 May: The traditional red bastion of Gazole Assembly segment in North Malda parliamentary seat is suffering from a huge setback as heavyweight CPI-M candidate Mr Sailen Sarkar was defeated by the Congress candidate Miss Mausam Noor.
The party leaders condemned the people as having "silently betrayed Mr Sarkar". The party has decided find out the cause of the ‘surprising’ result in the Assembly segment, where Miss Noor bagged 64,308 votes. Mr Sarkar obtained 61,335 votes, though the CPI-M had set a target of a leading margin of at least 25,000 votes.
According to CPI-M party sources, records show that in 1967 and '69 the CPI-M had suffered similar setbacks.
In Habibpur Assembly segment, another former red citadel, Mr Sarkar bagged only 5,556 votes. Besides Habibpur, Mr Sarkar failed to obtain a leading margin at six other Assembly segments. Even in Ratua Assembly segment, from where Mr Sarkar was elected twice as MLA and became minister for the state government, Miss Noor obtained 73, 320 votes, while Mr Sarkar, minister for state parliamentary affairs and environment, won only 57, 503 votes.
In Harishchandrapur, Chanchal and Ratua, where more than 65 to 67 per cent people belong to the minority community, Miss Noor was able to obtain a greater margin than her nearest CPI-M candidate.
Mr Ambar Mitra, the chief election agent of Mr Sarkar, could not explain the reason behind such 'surprising' results.
It was expected that the Malda MP and Congress contesting candidate Mr AH Khan Choudhury would win from the South Malda parliamentary seat but Congress workers had not predicted the extent of his leading margin, at 1,36,280 votes.
The CPI-M candidate Dr Abdur Razzaque bagged only 3,07,097 votes in total.
No comments:
Post a Comment