Mamata Banerjee today won a landslide victory in Bengal but lost in a cliffhanger in Nandigram to the BJP's Suvendu Adhikari, her former protege. "I accept the verdict in Nandigram - it is not a big deal. Don't worry," said the Chief Minister, declaring, however, that she would approach the court over "mischief".
The yo-yo trends in counting through the day saw Mamata Banerjee and Suvendu Adhikari alternately leading in different rounds, by margins ranging from six to 12,000.
Suvendu Adhikari was declared winner by 1,956 votes, not long after the Trinamool tweeted: "The counting process for Nandigram has not been completed. Please do not speculate." Late in the night, the Election Commission rejected the party's request for a recount.
The Bengal Chief Minister trailed Suvendu Adhikari in the early rounds of counting, which dimmed her party's euphoria over its spectacular victory. She scraped past him and managed a 1,200-vote lead in the afternoon. When the results seemed to be going the way of her former lieutenant, she shrugged it off.
"Let the Nandigram people give whatever verdict they want, I accept that. Nandigram was a sacrifice that was needed in the larger victory. We have won the state," she said.
"Whatever happened is for the best. I will not have to go that far regularly now, I am saved in that way. But I will go to the court because I have heard there were some malpractices," she said.
Nandigram is the town that catapulted Mamata Banerjee to power for the first time in 2011.-NDTV
