Poll battle between former couple delivers closest victory margin among Bengal LS seats

KOLKATA: The electoral contest between BJP's Saumitra Khan and his former wife Sujata Mondal of the TMC delivered the closest margin of victory among the 42 Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal.

According to the Election Commission data, Khan retained the Bishnupur Lok Sabha constituency by a margin of only 5,567 votes, the lowest in the state in this general election.

It was a see-saw battle all through during the counting of votes for the seat, with both going ahead several times by a maximum of a few thousand votes.

Khan, who had won from Bishnupur in 2014 as a TMC candidate, had switched sides and emerged victorious for the second time in 2019 as a BJP nominee by a margin of over 78,000 votes.

Interestingly, it was Sujata, then his wife, who had campaigned for Khan in the 2019 elections.

During that time, Khan was not allowed to enter the Bankura district, within which six of the seven assembly segments of the Bishnupur Lok Sabha constituency are situated, as per an order of the Calcutta High Court as a condition for granting him anticipatory bail in connection with criminal cases pending against him.

Mondal joined the TMC in December 2020, claiming that she did not get due recognition from the BJP even though she did her best to get her husband elected in the 2019 elections.

The winning margin for Khan has come down drastically this time when he was fighting against his former wife.

Arambagh is the only other constituency in Bengal where the winning margin is below the five-figure mark in this Lok Sabha elections.

Mitali Bag of TMC defeated BJP's Arup Kanti Digar from the seat in Hooghly district by 6,399 votes.

The seat had delivered one of the lowest margins in the state in the 2019 elections, out of the 42 constituencies, with the TMC having won by just over 1,000 votes.