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LF
cautious: More votes don’t mean more seats
Subrata
Nagchoudhury
Kolkata,
May 12: An equal vote share between the Left Front and Congress-Trinamool
combine as predicted by the exit poll on Thursday could be ominous
for the ruling front, say political analysts in West Bengal.
Having scrutinised past poll statistics, they say that an equal
vote share might not translate into an equal number of seats that
the Opposition might get. Past records show that many LF candidates
have won by a big margin which adds up to the vote share but certainly
does not add up to more seats.
For instance, political circles said that in the 1996 Assembly elections,
as many as 48 Left Front candidates had a margin of victory ranging
between 30,000 and 50,000. The margin of victory certainly added
to the vote share of the Left considerably. In contrast, only two
Congress candidates had won by a margin of a little over 30,000.
This could be one reason why Mamata Banerjee flashed the ‘‘V’’
sign for the second time today as she met the press. She appeared
more than confident when she said : ‘‘I don’t know
what the exit poll predicted. I have my own information. No one
can stop us from winning this election.’’
A day after the polls, the mood in the Trinamool camp was exuberant
while that of the rival Left Front was marked by cautious optimism.
Both camps were unanimous that the exit poll forecasts cannot be
taken to be absolute and that their claims of a victory are based
on independent assessment of polling day performance.
On being asked how Mamata could be so sure, a senior Trinamool leader
said: ‘‘She had reports from across the state. She knows
the people’s pulse and that’s precisely what makes her
a mass leader.’’
Today, Mamata was complaining about the malpractice and terror tactics
resorted to by the CPI(M). ‘‘The Chief Minister himself
encouraged his cadre to indulge in rigging. He acted like a mafia
leader,’’ Mamata charged and said that the Election Commission
had been repeatedly informed about it. ‘‘We still demand
re-polling in the entire constituency,’’ she added.
She also declared her programme once the results are out on Sunday.
Her first visit will be to the house of Topi Das, a Trinamool Congress
supporter whose body was recovered from a lake yesterday after a
police lathicharge in the Beleghata area. ‘‘The police
beat him to death and later threw his body into the lake,’’
she said and threatened to go to the National Human Rights Commisssion
to protest against police brutality.
However, former chief minister Jyoti Basu had something else to
say. Talking to the press, he said: ‘‘We are going to
win, but I can’t tell you the margin.’’ Even Chief
Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya maintained that ‘‘there
is no scientific basis to exit poll, but the Left will have a comfortable
margin.’’ Others within the Left confided that the Front
may just manage to get a slender victory margin.
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