Maintaining its winning spree, the ruling Trinamool Congress swept the three-tier panchayat polls in West Bengal capturing 13 out of 17 Zilla Parishads, while the Congress put up a poor show with just one in Murshidabad.
TMC’s clean sweep in the zilla parishads in 11 of 12 south Bengal districts and two out of five north Bengal districts, demonstrated that the two-and-a-half-years of incumbency and controversies, including the Saradha chit fund scam, by and large, failed to sway the rural people’s trust on the Mamata Banerjee government.
TMC not only did well in south Bengal, but also breached the barrier in north Bengal where it won Cooch Behar and South Dinajpur.
The party won the zilla parishads in Howrah, Hooghly, North 24 Parganas, South 24 Parganas, Burdwan, Birbhum, Nadia, Coochbehar and South Dinajpur districts.
The ruling party registered a huge victory in the three Maoist strongholds in Bankura, Purulia and West Midnapore districts.
In adjoining East Midnapore district, the TMC registered a major win except at Nandigram, the cradle of Banerjee’s anti-land acquisition campaign, where the party had to struggle with former Trinamool supporters, who fought as Independents.
In Nandigram block I and block II, out of 17 gram panchayat seats, official Trinamool candidates won 13 seats, while the independents bagged three seats and Left one.
At Singur, the Trinamool bagged 12 out of 16 Gram panchayat seats, with Left bagging just one and putting up a close fight in three others.
In the five districts of North Bengal, which went to polls, the results showed that Trinamool had widened its reach in Congress dominated regions.
The party registered spectacular victories in gram panchayat in Coochbehar and South Dinajpur, while making inroads in the Congress domain in North Dinajpur, the home ground of Congress minister and Mamata’s bete noire Deepa Dasmunsi.
The Left Front which failed to recover much lost ground won Jalpaiguri as the TMC victoriously swept through its bastions in Burdwan, Hooghly, Cooch Behar.
The Left bagged 13 of the 26 seats in the zilla parishad in North Dinajpur.
The Left Front put up a good fight in the districts of North and South 24 Parganas and Nadia.
The Congress conceded ground even in Malda and North Dinajpur where the Left did well.
In Malda district, Congress and the Left won 16 seats each in the zilla parishads with Trinamool coming a distant third with six.
Like zilla parishads, the green wave continued to dominate the rural Bengal in gram panchayat and panchayat samitis too.