Kolkata, Jun 4 (PTI) Dipak Adhikari, also known as Dev, was elected for the third consecutive term from Ghatal Lok Sabha constituency

He faced competition from another Bengali actor, Hiran Chatterjee, the MLA of Kharagpur Sadar, while the Congress-backed CPI candidate was Tapan Ganguly.

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Dev defeated his nearest rival Chatterjee by a margin of over 1,82,868 votes after the counting ended on Tuesday midnight.

Before weathering an acrimonious battle bordering on personal attack and accusations from his rival, Dev had often said he would have wished to keep himself away from electoral politics but finally relented after TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee and party general secretary Abhishek Banerjee insisted.

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The BJP had levelled accusations against Dev, alleging that he accepted money from a relative of a cattle smuggling accused and received expensive gifts like mobile phones.

However, the TMC leader dismissed these claims as slander campaigns to tarnish his image, even providing images of his transaction deal as a producer and asserting that he had shared all details with the enforcement directorate.

Dev promised to implement the Ghatal masterplan project to prevent recurrent flooding if re-elected. However, the BJP accused him of inaction during his previous two terms as MP, alleging that he was mostly absent from his constituency.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)