The ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are locked in a close contest for West Bengal’s 294 seats, exit polls showed on Thursday. Six out of nine exit polls gave chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s party an upper hand in the fiercely fought election battle, while the rest predicted that the BJP had an advantage.
Nonetheless, the exit polls predicted that the BJP was set to make huge inroads into Bengal, taking forward its success story that began in 2019, when the party won 18 of the state’s 42 Lok Sabha seats.
2016 results: The TMC won 211 of the 293 seats it contested. The BJP could manage just three (it contested 291 seats). The alliance of Left parties and the Congress won 76 seats. The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha won three, while one seat was won by an independent candidate.