Kolkata, Mar 2 (Agency) The Mamata Banerjee-led ruling Trinamool Congress on Wednesday scripted an all-crushing victory in the West Bengal civic polls by triumphing in 103 of the 108 Municipalities, for which the results were announced on Wednesday. The polls were held on February 27. The CPIM)-headed Left Front got Taherpur, while a new outfit and Hamro Party pulled out a surprising win in the prestigious Darjeeling municipality, official sources said here. Four municipalities – Begldanga (Murshidabad district), Egra (East Medinipur), Chapdani (Hooghly) and Jhalda (Purulia) – returned hung verdicts. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee expressed her gratitude to Ma-Mati-Manush (mother, land and people, her pet slogan) for according yet another overwhelming mandate to her party and congratulated the winning candidates. “Heart-felt gratitude to Ma-Mati-Manush for according yet another overwhelming mandate to us,” she said. As many as 31 municipalities, including Dinhata in North Bengal’s Cooch Behar district, did not elect a single opposition candidate.
However, in Dinhata all the Trinamool candidates had been declared winners unopposed as no other party candidates filed their nominations. The BJP, which had emerged as the main opposition party in the 2019 Lok Sabha and last year’s assembly polls, with dominating performances in North Bengal, came up with a poor performance, failing to win a majority in any of the municipal bodies. As per an initial analysis, the BJP seemed to be polling less percentage of votes than the Left Front, which retained its hold over Taherpur Municipality in Nadia district. The Trinamool raced to an emphatic victory in East Medinipur district’s Kanthi Municipality, henceforth considered a pocket borough of the leader of opposition Suvendu Adhikari and his family. Adhikari crossed over to the BJP last year and defeated Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in Nandigram in the Assembly election.
His father Sisir is officially the Trinamool MP from Kanthi, though his present political allegiance has been a matter of debate for long. The BJP suffered another big setback in Kanthi, when its MLA from Uttar Kanthi Sushmita Sinha lost from Ward number 6. The BJP also lost in West Medinipur district’s Kharagpur Municipality, which is considered a stronghold of its national vice president Dilip Ghosh. The former state party chief had won the Kharagpur Asssembly seat in 2016, and emerged victorious from Medinipur in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Kharagpur is part of Ghosh’s Lok Sabha constituency. In Balurghat of South Dinajpur district, from where present state BJP President Sukanta Majumdar had won the Loik Sabha polls, the Trinamool emerged victorious in the civic poll. In fact, the ruling party even won from the ward in Balurgha municipality where Majumdar is a voter.
Another BJP MP, political strongman Arjun Singh, saw his magic fail in his stronghold Bhatpara, as his party could not even open its account in the Municipality, which the Trinamool won with a grinding majority. The Congress put up a more pathetic show, crumbling in its long-time citadels of Murshidabad and Malda districts. Even the Baharampur Municipality, which the party had been winning for three decades and so long considered as an impregnable fortress of state Congress chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, feel to the Trinamool onslaught. An estimated 77 percent of voters had exercised their democratic rights during the polls on Sunday. However, the opposition parties had described the elections as a “farce” on the day of the election itself, accusing the Trinamool of resorting to violence, booth capturing and false voting. The BJP had in fact called a 12-hour bandh on Monday in protest against what it called “unprecedented violence, attacks, arson and complete failure of the law and order machinery”.