2019 Lok Sabha Election Results for Dum Dum, West Bengal: Trinamool's Saugata Roy retains his parliamentary constituency despite a close battle with BJP's Samik Bhattacharya

One of the 42 Lok Sabha constituencies of West Bengal, the Dum Dum seat witnessed an intense contest with the Trinamool, BJP, Congress and CPI(M) all fielding strong candidates. Saugata Roy of Trinamool, Nepaldeb Bhattacharya of CPI(M), Samik Bhattacharya of BJP and Saurav Saha of Congress were all in the fray for the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections

Result: 

Trinamool's Saugata Roy retains his Dum Dum seat with a margin of 53,002 votes. However, BJP's Samik Bhattacharya gave a tough fight to his rival candidate.   

Read: 2019 Lok Sabha Election Results For Patna Sahib, Bihar: Massive Victory For Ravi Shankar Prasad, Defeats Two-time MP Shatrughan Sinha In Biggest Prestige Battle

Campaign and Controversy:

Just a day after popular Bangladeshi film star Ferdous Ahmed was ordered out of India for violating the terms of his visa by campaigning for a Trinamool candidate, another Bangladeshi television actor, Gaazi Noor, kicked up a row by allegedly seeking votes for party nominee Saugata Roy.

BJP immediately lodged a complaint with the Election Commission after a video surfaced of Gaazi Noor purportedly campaigning for Saugata Roy in Dumdum Lok Sabha constituency in an alleged violation of the Model Code of Conduct.

2014 Lok Sabha Elections:

Dum Dum, an erstwhile Left citadel, witnessed a politically seismic event in 1998 when Tapan Sikdar of BJP won the seat and then repeated the feat in 1999. Many believe it was the Left cadre who supported Trinamool-BJP alliance in Dum Dum as they were unhappy with the leadership.

However, in 2014 Saugata Roy won by a margin of 1.55 lakh votes defeating CPI(M)'s Asim Sengupta who came in second. Tapan Sikdar came in third, polling 2.54 lakh votes. In the previous election, in 2009, Saugata Roy narrowly defeated CPI(M)’s Amitava Nandy by little over twenty-thousand votes. Third-placed Sikdar got fifty-five-thousand votes.