New Delhi, Jan 18 : Despite facing defections by the party leaders, the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamul Congress would manage to retain its fort in West Bengal as it is predicted to win 158 out of the 294 seats in the Assembly polls scheduled later this year, while the BJP will emerge as the second largest party in the state, as per the IANS C-Voter Battle for the States survey.
The survey included 18,000 respondents across all the 294 assembly constituencies in the state.
The Trinamool, which swept the 2016 Assembly polls by winning 211 seats, is likely to get 158 seats in the elections scheduled later this year with the BJP emerging as the second largest party in the state.
The survey said that the BJP, which had won three seats in West Bengal in 2016, is expected to win 102 seats this time, a gain of 99 seats.
Meanwhile, the Congress and the Left parties will once again lose their ground in the politically sensitive state, as they are expected to win 30 seats as compared to 76 seats they won in the 2016 Assembly polls.
The Congress and the Left had announced an alliance to contest the Bengal Assembly polls in December last year.
The survey predicted that the other parties are likely to win four seats in the state.
The survey also said that the Trinamool, which got 44.9 per cent vote share in the 2016 Assembly polls, will see a dent in its vote share as it is expected to get 43 per cent votes this year, a decline of 1.9 per cent.
The BJP, on the other hand, is set to get the maximum vote share in the state, as it is predicted to get 37.5 per cent votes as compared to 10.2 per cent in 2016, which is 27.3 per cent higher, it said.
The survey predicted that the Congress and the Left parties will also see major dent in their vote share as they will be reduced to 11.8 per cent as compared to 32 per cent vote share in 2016 assembly polls, thus a decline of 20.2 per cent.
The survey also said that the others will get a vote share of 7.7 per cent, down by 5.2 per cent from 2016’s 12.9 per cent vote share.
The survey predicted that Trinamool is expected to retain power in the state by winning 154 to 162 seats while the BJP is likely to get 98 to 106 seats.
It further said that the Congress and the Left parties are expected to win 26 to 34 seats in the state while the others will win two to six seats.
On a number of occasions, the BJP has said that it will win around 200 seats in West Bengal
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