West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has filed a petition in the Calcutta High Court challenging her defeat to BJP's Suvendu Adhikari in the Bhabanipur assembly polls. Mamata Banerjee was defeated by 15,105 votes in her traditional seat, south Kolkata's Bhabanipur, in the second phase of the state polls. She has alleged that the polls were rigged after deleting a few million names during the special intensive revision (SIR) of the electoral roll.
This is the second time Mamata Banerjee has been defeated by Adhikari in five years. She challenged him at his traditional Nandigram seat in 2021 and lost by 1,956 votes. The high court has deferred its hearing on a TMC petition challenging assembly speaker Rathindra Nath Bose's decision to recognise a group of 58 rebel TMC MLAs as the opposition.
Mamata Banerjee's Nandigram petition is still pending at the high court. The speaker has called an all-party meeting at the assembly to decide the formalities for the upcoming budget session starting June 18. However, Mamata Banerjee loyalist Kunal Ghosh has alleged that neither he nor any official TMC MLA was invited to the meeting.
