Mamata storms Red bastion; Cong gets Assam, Kerala
Source: The Sangai Express / Press Trust of India
New Delhi, May 13 2011:
Breaking the Red citadel, Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress ended the 34-year hegemony of the Left Front in West Bengal, while Jayalalithaa's AIADMK scored a landslide victory to oust DMK from power in Tamil Nadu as results of the assembly elections were out today.
Congress scored a spectacular hattrick in Assam bagging a near twothird majority to retain power and managed to wrest power from the Left Democratic Front in Kerala by a wafer-thin majority but lost Puducherry to its rebel.
Riding a wave of change in a state where Left ideology ruled the roost for over three decades, Banerjee along with allies Congress and SUCI gave a severe thrashing to the Left Front.
The Banerjee-led alliance was set to capture over two-thirds majority by winning over 225 seats in the 294 seat assembly.
Banerjee, Railway Minister at the Centre, did not contest the elections.
Trinamool Congress has won 142 seats and was leading in 44 more seats, while Congress has bagged 36 and was ahead in five.
On the rival side, the CPI(M), which headed the Left Front, has won 32 seats and was ahead in eight seats.
The CPI(M) suffered humiliation when a number of its bigwigs, including Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, bit the dust.
Shortly after defeat, Bhattacharjee resigned.
With defeats in West Bengal and Kerala, the Left will have power only in Tripura.
Tamil Nadu lived up to its 'winner takes all' reputation as Jayalalithaa swept back to power with a landslide victory with her alliance set to cross the 200 mark in the 234-member assembly.
AIADMK on its own is set to get 150 seats.
The party has won 73 seat and was leading in another 77 seats.
The DMK has won 10 seats and was ahead in 13, while ally Congress which contested 63 seats could manage only four wins and was leading in one.
State Congress President KV Thangkabalu was trailing by over 30,000 votes in Mylapore in Chennai.
The 2006 elections was a rare one for Tamil Nadu when for the first time it had a minority government.
The DMK had then won 96 seats and the government survived on outside support from Congress and others.
The AIADMK had won 61 seats in the 2006 elections.
While Jayalalithaa and Chief Minister Karunanidhi posted huge margins in Srirangam and Tiruvarur respectively, Deputy Chief Minister and DMK heavyweight MK Stalin was trailing in Kolathur.
Karunanidhi also tendered his resignation.
Assam provided a surprisingly huge victory when the party returned to power for the third time.
Congress vastly improved on its performance of 2006 when it had got 53 seats in the 126-member assembly by bagging 60 seats now and was ahead in 18 more.
The main opposition party AGP was reduced to a rubble having won only five seats and leading in six others.
It had 24 seats in the earlier assembly.
The defeat of the Left in Kerala was not as resounding as in West Bengal when the Left Democratic Front was neck and neck in the race for power and ultimately yielded by a slender margin to the Congress-led UDF.
The UDF won 72 seats, two more than the half way mark in the 140 member assembly.
The LDF won 68 seats.
Ageing Marxist veteran VS Achuthanandan's singlehanded campaign against corruption appears to have played a leading role in curbing the UDF's tally.
The 87-year-old Chief Minister helped CPI(M) emerge as the single largest party with 45 seats against Congress' 38 .
Puducherry broke the Congress' hold on power when it voted an alliance of N Rangasamy Congress and AIADMK which got two-thirds majority in the 30-member assembly of the Union Territory.
The NR Congress, headed by former CM N Rangasamy who left Congress a few months ago, bagged 15 seats while ally AIADMK won five seats.
The ruling Congress was reduced to seven seats, while ally DMK won two.
A lone Independent was successful.
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