Trinamool Congress retains all 20 Zilla Parishads
Kolkata: The Trinamool Congress has retained all the 20 Zilla Parishads under its control for the second consecutive time in the Panchayat elections after 2018.
In districts like Alipurduar (total 18 seats), South Dinajpur (21), Howrah (42), Jalpaiguri (24), Jhargram (19), North 24-Parganas (66), West Burdwan (18), East Burdwan (66), West Midnapore (60) TMC bagged all the Zilla Parishad seats.
In South 24-Parganas, which has the highest number of ZP seats (85), TMC won in 84 while ISF/Others could manage only one. Purulia ZP where there are 45 seats saw TMC winning 42 while BJP won and ISF/Others clinched only one. In Bankura ZP, where the total seats are 56, TMC won 55 while BJP won one. In Birbhum with 52 ZP seats, TMC bagged 51 while Congress won in one.
Birbhum had grabbed news headlines for all the wrong reasons in the recent past especially after the arrest of Trinamool Congress heavyweight Anubrata Mondal by the CBI.
In Cooch Behar, 30 out of 32 ZP seats went to TMC and BJP bagged two. In Hooghly, TMC swept 51 out of 53 seats while BJP won in two seats. In North Dinajpur, TMC won 22 of the 26 seats while BJP bagged three with Left managing only one and in East Midnapore, out of 70 ZP seats TMC won in 56 while BJP won in 14.
Till reports last came in, in Malda out of 43 ZP seats, TMC won in 28, BJP 3 and Congress 3; in Murshidabad out of 78 ZP seats, TMC had won in 65, Congress 5 and CPM 2 while in Nadia TMC had won 47 seats with the BJP winning in five.
In the 2013 Panchayat elections, TMC had won 13 of the 17 Zilla Parishads and were defeated in Malda, Murshidabad, Jalpaiguri and North Dinajpur and two other districts.
According to a database available from the State Election Commission, TMC also swept the Gram Panchayats by winning over 35,000 seats and leading in another 607.
BJP bagged the second spot winning in 9,722 and leading in 150 seats while CPI(M) won in 2837 seats and is leading in 67.
In case of Gram Panchayats, TMC won in 6,430 and was leading in 195 seats, with BJP winning in 982 and leading in 54, CPM winning in 176 and leading in 15.
The total number of seats in GP is 63229 in PS it is 9730 while in ZP this is 928. The total seats that have been won uncontested are 8002 in GP, 991 in PS and 16 in ZP.
Trinamool Congress chairperson Mamata Banerjee thanked the people of Bengal after her party registered a thumping victory in the Panchayat polls.
TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee said it was “a victory of the people, a victory of democracy”.
Significantly, Trinamool Congress made a clean sweep in all the 284 Gram Panchayat seats in Singur which is famous for the land movement spearheaded by Mamata Banerjee.
BJP’s performance in the four Jangalmahal districts — Bankura, Purulia, West Midnapore and Jhargram was abysmal in comparison to the 2019 Lok Sabha and 2021 assembly polls.
