Trinamool retains tight grip in rural Bengal

The Trinamool Congress has retained its hold on rural Bengal, keeping the Opposition a distant second in the state’s recent rural polls marred by violence, deaths, and instances of “loot of votes”.

The elections took place in 22 districts. Two of these districts had two-tier elections, and three-tier in the rest, with 5.67 crore voters, and over two lakh candidates in the fray.

The Opposition – BJP, and others, do not consider the elections to be a fair reflection of the people’s choices. The pre-poll duration and the poll-day remained violent, and re-poll took place on Monday in nearly 700 booths. Legal battles in the court, fierce political speeches, and deployment of central forces made the polls one of the keenly-watched elections for the rest of the country.

Also Read — Bengal poll violence unacceptable

BJP national spokesperson Sambit Patra, on Tuesday, stated that the central forces were not deployed properly by the state government, the data on sensitive booths was not shared, and “killing of 45 people” despite presence of central forces show that this is a “state sponsored murder”, not accidental. “This is state sponsored murder of democracy in West Bengal,” he said.

“It is not an actual reflection of people’s mandate,” BJP Bengal leader Suvendu Adhikari said, adding that the “post-poll violence” has begun.

Governor CV Ananda Bose, said that it’s time for introspection, and it’s more important to bury the differences and work for the people of West Bengal. He added that irrespective of political affiliation, the agenda for the entire Bengal is a fight against two common enemies – violence and corruption.

Trinamool national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, in a tweet, saw the outcome as a “dejection” of the combined opposition. “Even a malicious campaign with baseless propaganda to malign the AITC state govt in WB couldn’t sway the voters!” he stated.

The Results

By Tuesday late evening voting result-report of gram panchayats had Trinamool’s tally at 29,665 seats, and the BJP with 8021 seats. The Congress with 2094 seats, and the Left (CPI-M, CPI, AIFB, RSP) parties with 2595 seats – together had 4689 seats. Contest took place in 63219 seats.

Effectively, by late evening count, early estimates show that the Trinamool got in grip 69 percent of 3,317 gram panchayats, with the leading Opposition parties gaining control in around 11 percent gram panchayats.

Count of panchayat samiti votes showed Trinamool having won 2155, BJP at 214, CPI-M having won 47 seats, and Congress 38 seats. Elections took place for 9728 panchayat samiti seats. The count had Trinamool gaining control of 38 percent of the 341 panchayat samitis. For the 928 zila parishad seats, Trinamool had got 77 seats.

Panchayat elections 2018

As per state election commission figures, on the official website, Trinamool had over 78 percent, the BJP nearly 12 percent, with the Left-Congress having nearly six percent seats in the gram panchayats. In the panchayat samitis, Trinamool had over 87 per cent seats, and 96 percent of zila parishad seats.