17th Lok Sabha gets 11 women MPs from Bengal, 3 less than 2014

Kolkata:  As many as 11 women candidates from West Bengal emerged victorious in the Lok Sabha elections, three less than the last general elections in 2014.

With the saffron surge in the state, two women candidates from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) listed themselves as Members of Parliament (MP) in the 17th Lok Sabha along with their nine Trinamool Congress counterparts.

Eleven female candidates of the Trinamool and one from the Congress represented Bengal in the outgoing 16th Lok Sabha. The 14th and the 15th Lok Sabha had four and seven female MPs from Bengal, respectively.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, BJP’s Locket Chatterjee defeated her female rival Ratna De Nag of the Trinamool in Hooghly, while Debasree Chaudhuri grabbed the Raiganj seat for the saffron party.

First-time candidates and popular film actors Nusrat Jahan and Mimi Chakraborty had created a stir the very moment Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee announced their candidatures.

Jahan and Chakraborty, who remained undeterred by the immense criticism and distasteful trolls, had the final laugh on Thursday by winning from the Basirhat and Jadavpur Lok Sabha constituencies, respectively.

Dedicating her victory to the voters, Jahan tweeted, “Thanks to my lovely people of Basirhat. You are my family, my strength. Thank you for all your blessings and support. I dedicate myself to service of our nation. Looking forward to carry out more development work for Basirhat constituency. Jai Hind! Vande Mataram.”

Chakraborty too promised to work for the people. “I pledge to work for u all…As I always say u guys are my pride, my honour, my backbone to stand upright and will always be. Thank you,” she tweeted.

Trinamool’s Satabdi Roy, who won the Birbhum seat for the third time, said she was always confident about her victory. “Not just confidence, I had faith in the people that they will vote for the development work that has been done,” Roy said.

Kolkata Municipal Corporation chairperson Mala Roy, who was contesting one of the most important seats in the state, Kolkata South, defeated BJP candidate Chandra Kumar Bose, the grand nephew of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, by a margin of 136,339 votes.

Trinamool’s Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, a medic, is set for her third term after winning the Barasat seat, while ex-investment banker Mohua Moitra won from Krishnanagar to add to the ruling party’s numbers.

Trinamool’s Sajda Ahmad bagged the Uluberia constituency, Pratima Mondal won the Joynagar seat while Aparupa Poddar (Afrin Ali) became an MP from the Arambagh constituency.

Published on: May 24, 2019 at 21:12 IST

IANS