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Kolkata, June 16. Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday challenged her defeat in the Bhawanipur seat in the last assembly elections in the Calcutta High Court. BJP candidate and current Chief Minister Subhendu Adhikari had defeated Mamata Banerjee on this seat by 15,105 votes.

CM Shubhendu Adhikari had won Bhawanipur seat by 15,105 votes.

According to the information received, Mamata refused to accept defeat on her home turf, so she moved the court to challenge her defeat 42 days after the election results.

TMC sources said former CM Banerjee went to the High Court registry in the afternoon to verify the petition challenging the results. Trinamool Rajya Sabha MP Derek O’Brien, Dola Sen, lawyer and Lok Sabha MP Kalyan Banerjee and party leader Kunal Ghosh were also present with him.

It is noteworthy that the counting of votes for the assembly elections took place on May 4. After BJP’s landslide victory in the elections, Subhendu Adhikari became the party’s first Chief Minister in the state. In Bhawanipur, the Trinamool leader got 58,812 votes, which was 42.19 percent vote share. Whereas Shubhendu Adhikari got 73,917 votes, which was 53.02 percent of the total votes.

The Trinamool supremo had expressed doubt on the election results from the very beginning. He termed this victory of BJP as ‘wrong’. On the day of counting of votes, the counting process for Bhawanipur seat came to a halt repeatedly. Mamata herself went to Sakhawat Memorial School in the afternoon to find out the reason for the delay. While coming out after about two hours, he alleged assault.

While talking to journalists, Mamata had expressed her displeasure and said, ‘The Prime Minister and the Union Home Minister won this election by using the police administration, Election Commission and central forces, they looted votes.’ He complained that filing a complaint with the (now former) state Chief Electoral Officer, Manoj Aggarwal, yielded no results. Mamata had predicted on May 4, ‘We will come back.’

Interestingly, Mamata Banerjee went to Calcutta High Court for the first time on May 14 after Trinamool’s election defeat. He was wearing a black lawyer’s coat. She had reached the court to argue a PIL to the post-poll violence in the state. Wearing a court gown and appearing as a lawyer, he presented arguments before the division bench of Chief Justice Sujoy Paul and Justice Partha Sarathi Sen.