BJP's Bengal Heavyweight Dilip Ghosh Loses To Trinamool's Kirti Azad

BJP candidate Dilip Ghosh, the previous West Bengal state president of the saffron party, was defeated in Bardhaman-Durgapur Lok Sabha constituency by a margin of 1,37,981 votes, the Election Commission said on Tuesday.

He was defeated by Kirti Azad, the cricketer-turned-candidate of the Trinamool Congress.

Ghosh, accustomed to facing challenges, was tasked with retaining a seat won narrowly by the BJP's S S Ahluwalia by about 3,000 votes in the last elections.

He was, however, defeated by 1,37,981 votes this time around, according to the EC data.

Ghosh, who has a history of overcoming obstacles, rose to become the BJP's West Bengal state president just nine months after joining the party and secured a legislative assembly seat on his first attempt by defeating Congress veteran Gyan Singh Sohanpal in Kharagpur Sadar.

Similarly, he succeeded in becoming an MP in his debut attempt in 2019.

Under Ghosh's leadership in the state, the BJP surged from two seats to 18 out of 42 constituencies in Bengal in 2019, establishing the saffron party as a major challenger to the ruling Trinamool Congress.

However, Ghosh's shift from the Medinipur constituency, along with his removal from the position of the party's national vice-president, had transformed the Bardhaman-Durgapur contest into a pivotal test of his reputation.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)