Trinamool sweeps rural polls in Bengal
KOLKATA : Trinamool Congress scored a thumping victory in the violence-ridden rural polls in West Bengal, pushing the BJP to a distant second and virtually reducing the Left and the Congress to irrelevance in all three tiers of the panchayat structure in the state. The rural polls are significant because they are the last pan-Bengal electoral exercise before the Lok Sabha elections next year and their outcome would serve as a gauge of the support base that the contestants have in the eastern state.
KOLKATA: Mamata Banerjeee’s Trinamool Congress scored a thumping victory in the violenceridden rural polls in West Bengal, pushing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to a distant second and virtually reducing the Left and the Congress to irrelevance in all three tiers of the panchayat structure in the state.
The rural polls are significant because they are the last panBengal electoral exercise before the Lok Sabha elections next year and their outcome would serve as a gauge of the support base that the contestants have in the eastern state.
The BJP is aiming to win at least 22 of the 42 seats that West Bengal fills in the Lok Sabha.
Trinamool supremo and West Bengal chief minister Banerjee, who is trying to help form an antiBJP front of regional parties ahead of the parliamentary elections, is looking to make it an opposition-free state at every level.
Until 8pm on Thursday, the ruling party had won 19,394 (68%) of the 28,456 gram panchayat seats for which results had been declared. It had also bagged 1,842 (88.34%) of the 2,085 panchayat samiti seats and 62 of the 63 zilla parishad seats. BJP managed to win 5,050 (17.7%) of the gram panchayat and 166 (7.9%) of the panchayat samiti seats.
The Left headed by the CPI (M) won 1,480 seats (5.2%) and 32 seats (1.5%) in the gram panchayat and panchayat samiti tiers. Congress managed just 918 (3.2%) and 14 (0.6%) at the two levels, respectively.
Despite the BJP’s distant second position, it made a mark in the former Maoist belts in the districts of Jhargram, Purulia, West Midnapore and Bankura — a region where Banerjee has been highlighting the government’s welfare projects.
“The BJP, CPI(M) and Maoists contested together as one. Despite that we have won 90% seats. There was sporadic violence that we never wanted. But out of the 13 people who died, 10 were Trinamool supporters. Not a single BJP worker was killed,” Banerjee said.
“BJP has done better in some of the districts that border Bangladesh, Bihar and Jharkhand. They brought in troublemakers from Bangladesh and big money from Bihar, Jharkhand and Assam,” she alleged.