High-stakes Bengal battle concludes today with contest for Kolkata, adjoining seats

More than two months after theLok Sabha election dates were notified, polling concludes in West Bengal with voting in nine constituencies, including the seats in and around Kolkata, on Saturday.

West Bengal is one of the key battleground states where the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC) is trying to continue its Assembly election performance of 2021, when it swept back to power, and reverse the losses suffered in the parliamentary elections five years ago when the BJP posted its best-ever Lok Sabha result by winning 18 seats. This time, the BJP has a much loftier target nationally: winning at least 370 seats on its own and pushing the NDA alliance past 400. For that to materialise, a higher tally in Bengal is crucial.

Given the high stakes, the campaign in the state — one of the three along with Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to vote in all seven phases — saw the TMC, the BJP, and the Left-Congress alliance shrilly attack each other. For the TMC’s rivals, anti-corruption was a major plank against a government facing a raft of allegations of irregularities, from the school jobs scam to the ration and municipal scams. The Mamata government also received a lot of flak over the Sandeshkhali episode and the alleged sexual harassment and mistreatment of women there. Towards the latter stages, the TMC also faced criticism over Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s comment that a “few monks” Hindu monastic orders such as Ramakrishna Mission and Bharat Sevashram Sangha were helping the BJP in the state.

The TMC, led from the front by the CM and her nephew and Diamond Harbour MP Abhishek Banerjee, hit back at the BJP as a party of outsiders, accusing it of using central agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the