Kolkata: Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo Mamata Banerjee has declared she would not resign as West Bengal Chief Minister, refusing to recognize the election results as a valid loss and pledging to persist with her political battle even after the reversal.
Speaking to reporters here on Tuesday following TMC’s substantial electoral reversal, Banerjee said: I won’t resign… I haven’t lost”. She alleged extensive fraud, tampering with voter registers and pervasive unrest, asserting that “100 seats were stolen” in what she termed a “murder of democracy”.
Banerjee dismissed the verdict, stating the party was “not fighting BJP alone but an entire system”, while repeating charges of partiality and coordination between the Election Commission of India and central security personnel across voting and tallying phases.
TMC won 80 seats in the 294-seat Assembly, while BJP swept the polls by winning 207 seats. Banerjee’s own Bhabanipur constituency defeat stood out as a stark individual and partisan reversal.
She charged that almost 90 lakh entries were deleted from voter lists amid revisions, and blamed central forces for coercion, with TMC representatives and hopefuls facing assaults across various districts.
Even amid the reversal, Banerjee affirmed TMC’s cohesion, the launch of a 15-member inquiry panel to scrutinize claimed anomalies and resolve to press forward. “The party is intact and we will keep fighting. We will bounce back,” she said.
She recounted being assaulted en route to a counting centre during disturbances and claimed tallying was halted in several areas.
Labeling results day a “black day” in Bengal’s political narrative, she warned of eroded democratic norms and shrinking room for opposition voices in the state.
Banerjee said that INDIA bloc leaders like Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Arvind Kejriwal, Akhilesh Yadav, Tejashwi Yadav and Hemant Soren reached out to her post-result0 highlighting continued alliance support.
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