“Did not expect to be defeated by such a margin; respect the mandate” Sushmita Dev

Sushmita Dev, Congress candidate from Silchar has officially conceded defeat in Silchar. She became the member of parliament from Silchar constituency after defeating former union minister, Kabindra Purkayastha by a margin of 35,241 votes. This time she had the field for herself with CPIM and AIUDF not fielding any candidate from Silchar. As it turns out, Congress failed to tap into the AIUDF and CPIM votes as BJP wins by more than 64,000 votes.

Speaking to Barak Bulletin the Mahila Congress President says, “It was a tough contest for me but I tried my best. I thought the margin could be around 25,000 to 30,000 votes, but did not expect that I would get defeated by such a huge margin.”

Dev adds, “I completely respect the mandate of the mass.” Our correspondent asked her to shed some light to the factors that resulted in her facing the electoral debacle. Dev played it down, “It won’t be possible for me to identify the factors right away. We will sit together to analyse what went wrong,” says she.