The state-ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) is set to win with a huge margin in the West Bengal Panchayat elections while federally-ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is coming a distant second.
As per the latest information from the West Bengal State Election Commission, the TMC has won 42,097 gram panchayat seats out of the total 63,229 across the state while BJP only mustered 9,223.
Meanwhile, the Left Front clinched 3,021 whereas the Congress Party secured 2,430. Remaining candidates, including independent candidates, won 2,866 seats.
TMC leader and West Bengal state chief Mamata Banerjee thanked the people of the state for voting for her party in a Facebook post.
“It's TMC all the way in rural Bengal. I want to thank the people for their love, affection and support towards the TMC. This election has proved that only TMC resides in the heart of the people of the state,” Banerjee wrote.
Meanwhile, TMC politician Abhishek Banerjee said that the “roaring mandate” would pave the way for the party’s performance in the next year’s parliamentary elections. Thanking the people for voting for his party in the three-tier elections, he took a dig at the BJP, saying that the campaign of “No Vote to Mamata” has turned into “Now Vote for Mamata”.
On the other hand, BJP’s state unit president, Sukanta Majumdar, claimed TMC fabricated the results and said that he will take legal action in the matter. He even staged a sit-in protest outside a counting center at Balurghat College in the Dakshin Dinajpur district late on Tuesday night.
While talking to the reporters, Majumdar said: “Despite our candidates winning in the elections...the results are being fabricated. The ruling party has brought criminals inside the counting center to help their candidates win by rigging the counting. The Block Development Officer (BDO) is biased and is an agent of TMC.”
The rural body polls held on July 8 witnessed widespread violence across West Bengal. Several people, including workers of TMC, BJP and other political parties, died in the violence.
The polls are seen to be as a litmus test for the major political parties – TMC, BJP and the Left-Congress alliance – in the state ahead of 2024 Parliamentary Polls as the results will be an important indicator to tell which way the political wind in the state is blowing.
In the previous rural body polls in 2018, TMC won more than 95 percent of gram panchayats, of which 34% of the seats were uncontested, a record in the history of Bengal panchayat polls.