Cong fails to regain ground in two seats

AVIJIT SINHA, TT, Siliguri, Oct. 8: The Congress has come in the third and fourth positions in the two Assembly constituencies of Phansidewa and Matigara-Naxalbari, respectively, the results of the Siliguri Mahakuma Parishad show.

The Congress had hoped that it could bounce back after the drubbing in the last Lok Sabha polls, but failed to get a decent vote share in the SMP polls.

Sankar Malakar and Sunil Tirkey of the Congress had won from Matigara-Naxalbari and Phansidewa in 2011 when the party contested the Assembly polls in alliance with Trinamul. However, both the parties severed ties and contested separately in 2014 Lok Sabha elections. The two seats comprise the entire SMP area.

The Congress had moved to the fourth position in the two Assembly seats which are under the Darjeeling Lok Sabha constituency in the 2014 polls.

The data of the SMP results show that at the gram panchayat level, the Congress could secure only 61 of 462 seats, that is 13.2 per cent of total seats. At the panchayat samiti level, the party got only six seats out of 66 seats, that is nine per cent of total seats. All nine candidates fielded by the Congress in the SMP have lost.

When the results are analysed in terms of Assembly segments, the Left is ahead of Trinamul in Matigara-Naxalbari by 4,884 votes, while Trinamul led by 4,962 votes in Phansidewa.

The Left was second in Phansidewa and Matigara-Naxalbari in the 2011 Assembly polls and third in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

A Congress leader said: "In 2014 Parliament polls, the Congress moved to the fourth place in the two Assembly segments. We thought we could recover from the debacle but in terms of the SMP poll results, we are in the fourth and third positions at Matigara-Naxalbari and Phansidewa Assembly seats, respectively."

A CPM leader said based on yesterday's results, the party was in a better position in the two Assembly seats. "We will take up a series of activities in the entire SMP area to augment our support base," he said.

The SMP results have also proved that the lead by the BJP in the two seats in the 2014 Parliament polls was because of "Modi magic".

In 2014, S.S. Ahluwalia, the Darjeeling MP, had secured 1,12,897 votes from these two Assembly segments. In the SMP polls, the votes have come down to 48,232.

Despite consistent campaigns by the Darjeeling MP and Gorkha Janmukti Morcha chief Bimal Gurung, the BJP finished third in Matigara-Naxalbari and fourth in Phansidewa.