Thaindian News

Kolkata, May 13 (IANS) West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and 25 of his ministerial colleagues were humbled by opposition nominees - some of them first time contestants - as the Left Front was routed Friday after 34 years in power.

Only eight of the 34 ministers in fray managed to save their seats.

Bhattacharjee went down by a margin of 16,684 votes to former state chief secretary and first-time contestant Manish Gupta in the red citadel of Jadvapore.

The Marxists have won every time in Jadavpore since the constituency was formed in 1967.

Bhattacharjee, who had been winning the seat since 1987, became only the second serving chief minister of the state after Prafulla Chandra Sen in 1967 to be defeated.

Leading lights of Bhattacharjee’s cabinet like Nirupam Sen (industries), Asim Dasgupta (finance), Gautam Deb (housing), Kshiti Goswami (PWD), Kanti Ganguly (Sundarbans affairs) bit the dust.

Among the ministers who won were Surjyakanta Mishra (health), Abdur Rezzak Mollah (land reforms), Sushanta Ghosh (Pashimanchal development), Anisur Rahman (panchayat) and Subhas Naskar (irrigation).

An interesting angle is that Bhattacharjee and Nirupam Sen - the faces of the Left Front’s industrialisation drive that led to catastrophes in Singur and Nandigram - lost, but Mollah, who had on several occasions expressed his reservations about the land acquisition policy of the government, won.

Several ministers lost by big margins.

While Gautam Deb, CPI-M’s star campaigner in the election, lost by over 31,000 votes, Asim Dasgupta’s margin of defeat was over 26,000 and Naren De (agriculture) finished about 45,000 votes behind his Trinamool rival.

What was more insulting for the LF is that some of the veterans lost out to rank outsiders in politics. While Deb was defeated by theatre personality Bratya Basu, Dasgupta went down to FICCI secretary general Amit Mitra.