New Delhi: 4:00 pm: The CPI(M)-led Left Front is facing a rout in West Bengal winning so far only one seat while the ruling Trinamool Congress is set to sweep the Lok Sabha polls having already won 13 seats and leading in another 21 constituencies.
The Congress and BJP also won one seat each. The BJP, fighting on its own, won one seat and is ahead in another, while the Congress retained one and is leading in three others, already having lost the Raiganj seat from where Union Minister Deepa Dasmunshi contested.
President Pranab Mukherjee's son Abhijit Mukherjee has retained the Jangipur seat for the Congress, though winning by a margin of only 8,315 votes. The CPI(M)-led Left Front, which had 15 seats in the 15th Lok Sabha, managed to wrest the Raiganj seat by a slender margin of 1,163 votes.
CPI(M) central committee member Mohammad Salim won the seat. The Trinamool Congress, which had 19 seats out of 42 in the present Lok Sabha, made major gains winning 13 and was ahead in 21 other constituencies in some of which it has established a considerable lead.
For the TMC, major winners so far are former Railway Minister Dinesh Trivedi from Barrackpur. Another former Union minister Saugata Roy won from Dumdum. Both of them retained their seats.
Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee's nephew Abhishek Banerjee won the Diamond Harbour seat. Suvendu Adhikari won from Tamluk and Sugato Bose, a Harvard professor, won from Jadavpur.
BJP's Babul Supriyo, a playback singer, won by a comfortable margin of 70,260 votes, while its vice-president S S Ahluwalia was leading from Darjeeling.
The Congress, which had won six seats in 2009 in alliance with the Trinamool Congress, is ahead in four constituencies. Prominent among them are Union ministers Adhir Chowdhury from Baharampur and A H Khan Chowdhury from Maldah Dakshin.
1:30 pm: TMC ahead in 31 seats, Congress in five and BJP in four.
12:00 pm: Former Railway Minister Dinesh Trivedi of Trinamool Congress wins from Barrackpur constituency by 1,01,373 votes over his nearest rival Subhasini Ali of CPI(M).
In Bangaon seat, Kapil Krishna Thakur of TMC won by 2,655 votes over CPI(M)'s Debesh Das.
10:55 am: Nine-time MP Basudeb Acharia of CPI(M) is leading by 515 votes over TMC's Moonmoon Sen in the Bankura seat. In Howrah, Prasun Banerjee of TMC is leading over CPI(M)'s Sridip Bhattcharjee by 9,087 votes.
In Uluberia, TMC's Sultan Ahmed is leading by 1,156 votes over Sabiruddin Mollah of CPI(M). In the Arambagh seat, TMC's Aparupa Poddar (Afrin Ali) is leading by 12,199 votes against CPI(M)'s Santimohan Malik.
In the Murshidababd seat, Abdul Mannan Hossain of Congress is leading by 1,569 votes over CPI(M)'s Badrudzza Khan. In the Srirampur seat, sitting TMC MP Kalyan Banerjee is leading by 5,461 over CPI(M)'s Tirthankar Roy.
10:32 am: Dinesh Trivedi of TMC leading by 2,689 votes over CPI(M)'s Subhashini Ali in Barrackpore seat. CPI(M)'s Ram Chandra Dom, the sitting MP, is leading by 2,638 votes over CPI(M)'s Anupam Hazra in Bolpur seat. In the Kolkata North seat, Sudip Bandopadhyay of TMC is leading by 1,062 votes over Rahul Sinha of BJP.
In the Hooghly constituency, Ratna De Nag of TMC is leading by 8,471 votes over CPI(M)'s Pradip Saha. In Bardhaman Durgapur seat, Mumtaz Sanghamita of TMC is leading by 4,774 votes over her nearest rival Sk Saidul Haque of CPI(M).
In the Bardhaman East constituency, Sunil Mondal of TMC is leading by 4,406 votes over Iswar Chandra Das of CPI-M. In Alipurduar, Dasarath Tirkey of TMC is leading by 550 votes over Manohar Tirkey of RSP.
In the Barasat seat, Mortaza Hossain of Forward Bloc is leading by 1,995 votes against Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar of TMC. In the Dumdum seat, Sougata Roy of TMC is ahead of his CPI(M) rival Asim Dasgupta by 8389 votes.
In the Hooghly seat, Ratna De Nag of TMC is leading by 6,131 votes against his CPI(M) rival Pradip Saha.In the Diamond Harbour seat, TMC's Abhisek Banerjee, nephew of Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee, is leading by 5,143 votes over CPI(M)'s Abul Hasnat.
In Raiganj, CPI(M)'s Mohammad Salim is leading by 4,045 votes over Congress candidate and sitting MP Deepa Dasmunshi. In the prestigious Kolkata South constituency, Subrata Bakshi of TMC is leading by 996 votes over Tathagata Roy of BJP.
In Joynagar, TMC's Pratima Naskar is leading by 12,592 votes against Subhash Naskar of RSP. In the Malda South seat, Congress candidate and sitting MP Abu Hasem Khan Chowdhury is leading by 1,208 votes over TMC's Mouzzen Hossen.
In Ranaghat, Tapas Mondal of TMC is leading by 13,488 votes against his nearest rival Archana Biswas of CPI(M). Idris Ali of TMC is leading by 5,218 votes over Nurul Huda of CPI(M) in the Basirhat seat.
In the Baharampur seat, Adhir Chowdhury, who is the West Bengal unit president of Congress, is leading by 5,091 votes over TMC's Indranil Sen. In Balurghat, Arpita Ghosh of TMC is leading by 1,357 votes over Bimal Sarkar of RSP.
Khagen Murmu of CPI(M) is leading by 567 votes against Congress' sitting MP Mausam Noor in Maldah North seat. Sandhya Roy of TMC is leading by 571 votes in Medinipur seat against Prabodh Panda of CPI.
9:45 am: TMC is leading in 16 seats.
9:29: am: TMC's Sugato Bose is leading by 893 votes over nearest rival Sujan Chakraborty of CPI(M). Tapas Pal of TMC is leading by 216 votes over CPI(M)'s Santanu Jha at Krishnagar. Satabdi Roy of TMC is leading by 953 votes over BJP's Joy Banerjee in Birbhum seat.
BJP is leading from Darjeeling with its candidate SS Ahluwalia leading by 2000 votes over his Trinamool Congress rival Baichung Bhutia.
In Asansol, BJP's Babul Supriyo is leading by 556 votes over TMC's Dola Sen.
9:00 am: TMC is ahead in seven seats, BJP in two and Congress in one.
In West Bengal, according to various exit polls, Congress's erstwhile ally Trinamool Congress (TMC) is clearly ahead of all others in the fray. Mamata Banerjee-led TMC is expected continue its good show in this election too.
The contest in Bengal is four cornered with the TMC, Left, Congress and BJP competing for 42 seats. In 2009, TMC won 19 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal, but this time it is likely to will win more than 25 seats.
Mamata's campaign was marked for her focused attack on the BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, who engaged her in a war of words as he campaigned aggressively in the state, where his party has only had minor presence so far. At 59, Banerjee fought one of the toughest political battles of her life.
She has categorically said that her party won't tie-up with the BJP if the latter comes to power. The war of words between the TMC supremo and Modi turned ugly after the BJP strongman targeted her over the West Bengal Saradha chit fund case.
The prominent candidates in the fray are:
Bappi Lahiri - BJP - Serampore
journalist-turned politician Chandan Mitra - BJP - Hooghly
Satabdi Roy - TMC - Birbhum
Kalyan Banerjee - TMC - Serampore
Baichung Bhutia - TMC - Darjeeling
Sugata Bose - TMC - Jadavpur
(With additional inputs from PTI)
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