The Trinamool Congress on Tuesday swept the West Bengal panchayat polls, winning 2,552 out of 3,317 gram panchayats, reported NDTV. The Mamata Banerjee-led party also won 232 of the 341 panchayat samitis and 12 out of 20 zilla parishads for which elections were held.
The BJP was a distant second, bagging only 212 gram panchayats, seven panchayat samitis and no zilla parishads. The Left Front won 15 gram panchayats and one zila parishad, reported the Hindustan Times. The Congress secured 26 gram panchayats but none of the panchayat samitis and zilla parishads.
Some of the results are awaited.
The counting of votes for 73,887 seats in the three-tier panchayat system of West Bengal began on Tuesday morning.
The elections took place on July 8. However, repolling was held at 696 booths on Monday after widespread incidents of violence left at least 20 persons dead and reports of tampering with ballot boxes also surfaced. Violence was reported from different parts of the state even on Tuesday.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee thanked voters, saying that her party “resides in the heart of the people”.
Alleging that the Opposition parties in the state used malicious campaigns against the Trinamool Congress, party General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee said that they could not sway the voters.
“Grateful to the people for converting Opposition’s ‘NO VOTE TO MAMATA’ campaign to ‘NOW VOTE FOR MAMATA’,” he tweeted. “With unwavering support to #TrinamooleNaboJowar, we’ll surely have a roaring mandate, paving the way for LS elections.”
The BJP, however, accused the Trinamool Congress of engaging in fraud to win the elections.
“He [Abhishek Banerjee] should be thanking the state election commissioner, state police and administration which put their entire weight into ensuring that the TMC won resoundingly in these panchayat elections by means which were at best, half irregular and at worst, completely irregular,” remarked the BJP’s Swapan Dasgupta, according to ANI.
Dasgupta also said that the Election Commission should take a lesson from what happened in the panchayat polls to understand the extent of alleged “irregularities, high-handedness and rigging which took place”.
“This was not an election, it was a farce,” he said. “It was an assault on democracy. It was a complete travesty on everything India stands for and I hope this will never be repeated in any part of India, least of all in West Bengal in any other election.”
BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra also said on Tuesday that the violence in West Bengal was unprecedented and claimed that 45 persons had died in the state. The party also blamed the Trinamool Congress for failing to deploy the central security forces properly.
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