West Bengal election result LIVE: TMC leads; Mamata trails in Nandigram

West Bengal election result 2021 LIVE updates: Counting of votes for the 294-seat West Bengal election 2021 is underway. An aggregate of six exit polls predicted that Mamata Banerjee may just make it past the half-way mark but her comfort factor will largely depend on how much she can widen the gap with her challenger BJP after a series of defections. The BJP's projected tally is significant in a state where it has so far been an outlier.

The result will decide whether Mamata Banerjee, who has been in power for 10 years and is arguably fighting the toughest poll of her political career, has been able to thwart the challenge by the battle-hardened election army of the BJP led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah.

The BJP, which had just three seats in the 294-member Assembly in the 2016 Assembly polls and went to win 18 out of 42 seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha election, had pulled out all stops in the state in a determined bid to oust Banerjee, a vocal critic of Prime Minister Modi, and add another state to its tally of 17.
 

The Left-Congress alliance is third main contestant in the state.

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