Even though the initial trends showed a neck-and-neck fight between The Trinamool Congress (TMC) and BJP in West Bengal, however, as the day progressed, the TMC surged past the BJP in the race, leaving its challenger far behind.
As of 2:00 pm, the TMC was ahead in 210 seats with victory in one seat and the BJP was ahead in 78 seats with one win.
The ruling party had comfortably crossed the halfway mark in the state with 294 assembly seats.
In the keenly watched Nandigram seat, the BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari was holding on to his lead against chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who was slowly catching up.
Meanwhile, BJP MP Locket Chatterjee was trailing in Chunchura, which falls under her Lok Sabha constituency.
The BJP, however, hopes that Chatterjee would catch up in the later rounds and win.
TMC, till the filing of this report, had a vote share of 48.5%, the corresponding number for the BJP was 37.5%, according to the poll watchdog’s website.