Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool is ahead in Bengal in counted for state elections held amid a huge Covid surge. The DMK has crossed the half-way mark in early leads in Tamil Nadu and the BJP in Assam; in Kerala, LDF is past the majority mark.Here are the top 10 updates on assembly election results 2021:Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress is facing a tight race in Bengal, where the BJP seems to have made gains since the 2019 nationa elections. The Chief Minister’s Trinamool and the BJP ran a bitter, no holds barred campaign that defied Covid safety rules as well as the poll code.The most-watched fight in Bengal is for Nandigram, where the Chief Minister faces off against the BJP’s Suvendhu Adhikari, her ex-aide whose December defection triggered a flood of exits. Ms Banerjee is trailing in early trends in Nandigram.In Assam, the BJP is ahead of its nearest rival Congress, which campaigned hard to reclaim its one-time bastion.In Tamil Nadu, the DMK crossed the half-way mark in early leads, ahead of the ruling AIADMK, which has an alliance with the BJP.In Kerala, the incumbent LDF has an edge in a close fight with the Congress-led UDF. The LDF is hoping to buck a 40-year tradition and win re-election.Voting for these elections took place in March and April, just as India started reporting thousands of fresh coronavirus infections every day. On March 14, two weeks before the first phase, there were fewer than 25,000 new cases a day. On March 27 there were around 62,000 and, by April 29, there were well over 3.5 lakh per day. On Saturday, new cases reached a record daily high of 401,993, the biggest across the world.Alongside the Covid spike, leaders of all political parties, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, led political rallies at which large crowds discarded safety rules on masks and social distancing.Last week the Madras High Court said the Election Commission “should probably be booked for murder” for not stopping rallies. Late Saturday the Commission hit back and filed a complaint in the Supreme Court.The Election Commission has banned all victory processions. The poll body has also said candidates will not be allowed inside counting centres without either a negative Covid report (no older than 48 hours) or confirmation that they’d received both their vaccine shots.Senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal tweeted this morning: “On today’s election results: Whoever wins such victories are pyrrhic. Today what matters is: Saving lives.”
