Kolkata: Trinamool Congress chief and former West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday filed an election petition before the Calcutta High Court challenging the result of the Bhabanipur Assembly constituency, where she was defeated by BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari – now the State’s Chief Minister – by a margin of 15,105 votes in the May 4 Assembly election.
Banerjee filed an affidavit in support of her election petition challenging the outcome of the constituency, a traditional stronghold of the TMC, alleging irregularities in the counting process that led to her defeat.
She reached the High Court unexpectedly on Tuesday afternoon. This is the second time Mamata has gone to the High Court after the Trinamool’s electoral debacle. According to TMC MP and senior advocate Kalyan Banerjee, she personally visited the court registry to affirm the petition contesting the election result. Banerjee was accompanied by senior TMC leaders, including Kunal Ghosh, Derek O’Brien and Dola Sen.
The legal challenge comes more than a month after the results of the 2026 Assembly election, in which Banerjee lost the Bhabanipur seat to Adhikari by over 15,000 votes. The defeat was one of the most significant setbacks for the TMC leader, who had won the Bhabanipur seat in three successive elections since 2011.
According to Kalyan Banerjee, the petition seeks judicial scrutiny of the electoral process in Bhabanipur.
The petition invokes the Representation of the People Act. TMC sources said Banerjee’s legal team would formally press allegations of corrupt practices and procedural lapses during the vote count, though detailed particulars of the petition were not immediately made available.
The move is not without precedent in Banerjee’s political career. In 2021, Banerjee had filed a similar petition after she lost to Adhikari in Nandigram by a margin of 1,956 votes. In that petition, the TMC chief accused Adhikari of committing corrupt practices as envisaged under Section 123 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, and also claimed that discrepancies were committed in the counting process. The 2021 Nandigram case is still pending before the High Court.
Suvendu Adhikari went on to become the first BJP Chief Minister of West Bengal after the BJP’s resounding win in the Assembly polls, which ended the TMC’s 15-year rule in the State.