2011 West Bengal Legislative Assembly election

2011 West Bengal state general election

18 April 2011 (2011-04-18) – 10 May 2011 (2011-05-10)

All 294 seats in the West Bengal Legislative Assembly
148 seats needed for a majority
Opinion polls
Turnout84.33% ( 2.36 pp)
  Majority party Minority party Third party
 
Leader Mamata Banerjee Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee Pradip Bhattacharya
Party AITC CPI(M) INC
Alliance UPA LF UPA
Leader since 1998 2000 2008
Leader's seat Bhabanipur (By-elected) Jadavpur
(Lost)
Did not contest
Last election 26.64%, 30 seats 37.13%, 176 seats 14.71%, 21 seats
Seats before 30 176 21
Seats won 184 40 42
Seat change 154 136 21
Popular vote 18,547,678 14,330,061 4,330,580
Percentage 38.93% 30.08% 9.09%
Swing 12.29 pp 7.05 pp 5.62 pp
Alliance seats 227 62 227
Seat change 173 173 173

Seatwise Map of the Election Results

Structure of the West Bengal Legislative Assembly after election

Chief Minister before election

Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee
CPI(M)

Chief Minister after election

Mamata Banerjee
AITC

Assembly election was held in Indian state of West Bengal in 2011 to elect the members of West Bengal Legislative Assembly as the term of the incumbent government was about to expire naturally. The election was held in six phases between 18 April and 10 May 2011 for all the 294 seats of the Assembly. In a very high voltage election, a voter turnout of over 84% was recorded, the highest ever in the history of Bengal so far.

The Trinamool Congress led United Progressive Alliance won an absolute majority of seats in the state in a historic win marking the end of 34-year rule of Left Front, the longest-serving democratically elected communist government in the world, a fact that was noted by international media. Notably, the incumbent Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee lost even his Jadavpur seat to Trinamool's Manish Gupta, which was considered to be an electoral bastion of the CPI(M). Bhattacharjee became the 2nd Chief minister of the state to lose from his own seat, after Congress' Prafulla Chandra Sen's defeat in Arambagh to Ajoy Kumar Mukherjee of Bangla Congress in 1967.