Out of 1307 GP seats, TMC bags 871

BALURGHAT: Ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) achieved a landslide victory in the rural polls in the South Dinajpur district. South Dinajpur has 64 Gram Panchayats (GP), eight Panchayat Samities (PS) and one Zilla Parishad (ZP).

GP has 1308 seats, PS has 189 seats while the ZP has 21 seats. The result is pending in one GP seat due to some complications as stated by the district Panchayat election cell.

Out of 1307 GP seats, the Trinamool Congress won 871 seats, the BJP bagged 335 seats, CPI(M) won 42 seats, RSP won 23 seats, Congress won 13 seats while Independent candidates won 23 seats.

Out of 189 PS seats, the TMC bagged 164 seats while the BJP 24 and the CPIM won 1 seat. Of 21 ZP seats, the TMC won all the seats while the opposition parties drew a blank.

In the last rural polls of 2018, the TMC had won 546 seats in GPs while the BJP, CPI(M), RSP and Congress bagged 228, 40, 43 and 18 seats respectively. The rest of the GP seats went to the Independent candidates.

In PS, in the 2018 polls, the TMC bagged 131 seats while the BJP, CPI(M), RSP and Congress won 20, one, two and five seats respectively leaving the rest of PS seats for the Independent candidates. In the 2018 ZP contest, TMC won 18 seats while Left Front bagged 2 seats. The result of one seat was pending.

According to a political observer, the ground base of the TMC party in the rural areas of the district has become stronger after the 2018 polls. Lack of organisation has taken a toll on the saffron brigade.

“The vote bank of the TMC party remained consolidated in all eight blocks of the district. In addition to this, the TMC had fielded new faces in most of the GP, PS and ZP seats owing to their clean image. Apart from this, the Mamata Banerjee-led state government had taken up several social welfare projects for the rural people which worked in the party’s favour,” said a political observer.

BJP state party president Sukanta Majumdar said: “TMC has terrorised our voters and prevented them from voting. They adopted unscrupulous means during counting too.”

Waving off the allegations, district TMC vice-president Subhas Chaki said: “ Instead of making these baseless allegations BJP should concentrate on increasing and strengthening their organisation otherwise they will suffer the same fate in the Lok Sabha election in 2024.”