West Bengal: Local bodies’ elections
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Civic polls/ 2017
May 2017
TMC wins 4, GJM 3 civic bodies in WB, May 18, 2017: The Times of India
West Bengal's ruling Trinamool Congress maintained their supremacy, emerging victorious in four municipalities while GJM managed to retain control in three in the northern hills but the Congress-Left Front alliance and the BJP came a cropper in the civic poll results announced. The Trinamool virtually wiped out all opposition in the plains where it won Raiganj, Domkal and Pujali municipalities.Congress was decimated in its strongholds, while the BJP, bidding to come up as the main opposition, managed to win only three wards. IANS
Trinamool Congress won four out of the seven Bengal towns that had gone into municipal election and created history by taking control of a Mirik Municipality in the hills and becoming the first political mainstream political party from the plains to win an election in the last three decades.
Trinamool Congress won Pujali in south 24 parganas, Domkal in Murshidabad, Raiganj in north Dinajpur and Mirik in Darjeeling. In all the four municipalities, Trinamool Congress swept the election results.
At Pujali, TMC won 12 out of the 16 wards with BJP coming second with only 2 wards. At Domkal, TMC won 20 out of the 21 wards. The opposition of Congress - Left alliance had initially won 3 wards but immediately after the results, two of them - Rafikul Islam of ward 20 and Ashadul Islam of ward 9 joined Trinamool Congress, cutting down their tally to just 1. This was the first ever election for the Domkal Municipality.
Raigani Municipality, that was in control of Congress prior to the election was also swept by the TMC that won 24 out of the 27 wards. At Mirik TMC won 6 out of 9 wards, beating the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha - BJP alliance for the first time for any political party in the plains since 1986.
The three other towns in the hills - Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Kurseong however remained in control with GJM even as TMC. GJM won 31 out of the 32 seats in Darjeeling and 17 out of 20 wards in Kurseong. At Kalimpong, whose results, came out last among the seven municipalities was also won by the GJM- BJP alliance. The alliance led in 11 out of 23 wards while Harka Bahadur Chhetri led Jan Andolan Party (JAP) won 2 seats and TMC won 2 seats.
Aroop Biswas, the state minister and the Trinamool Congress observer for Darjeeling district said the win at Mirik was the result of chief minister Mamata Banerjee's tireless efforts at the hills and said democracy was restored in several years for the first time in the hills.
"Mamata Banerjee visited the hills several times and has been able to understand the needs of the people and have been able to convince them about their rights. Mirik has opened the doors of development in the hills and we will take it forward to the other places from here and are sure to fare even better in the hills in the coming years," said Biswas.
Trinamool general secretary Partha Chattopadhyay said the wins did not come to him by surprise. "We were expecting the wins but the margin of the victory has been satisfying. At Mirik, people had complained that those in power had done little development and had misused the funds so they have voted for us. Our motto is development and that is the path we are going to tread," he said.
On the day of the election, violence was reported from all the three plains towns that went to vote -Pujali in the south (South 24-Parganas), Domkal in the middle (Murshidabad) and Raiganj in the north (North Dinajpur) -though the four Hills towns that voted for new civic agencies (Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Kurseong and Mirik) were peaceful.
State Congress chief Adhir Chowdhury petitioned PM Narendra Modi against alleged rigging of local polls and Left and Congress supporters demonstrated outside the office of the state election commission in Kolkata demanding polls be scrapped all together. The West Bengal Election Commission on Monday ordered a repoll at six booths of three municipalities that took place.
Commenting on the results, opposition parties blamed TMC's alleged violence politics the reason behind their crushing defeat. "Everyone has seen how elections had happened this time. It was a farce in the name of election and after the way they rigged the votes, this result was expected," said Congress leader Prakash Upadhyay.
CPM youth leader Satarup Ghosh said he was unhappy with the way two Congress - Left alliance leaders at Domkal joined TMC right after the win but also criticized TMC for taking them. "This is disgraceful on part of the two to not to respect the people who have voted for them and change parties right after the win. But how could even TMC take them?" he said.
August 2017
TMC sweeps Bengal civic polls, BJP emerges as main challenger, Aug 17, 2017: The Times of India
HIGHLIGHTS
The Left put up a poor show with the Forward Bloc winning a seat in Nalhati municipality
The Congress failed to win even a single seat in the polls.
TMC sweeps Bengal civic polls, BJP emerges as main challenger
KOLKATA: The Trinamool Congress swept the municipal polls in West Bengal+ capturing all the seven civic bodies while the BJP finished second in most places relegating the Left to the third position.
The BJP won six seats in three municipalities which included four in Dhupguri in north Bengal and one each in Buniyadpur (north Bengal) and Panskura in south Bengal, according to the results of the August 13 civic elections.
The TMC bagged also seats in Panskura and Haldia in East Midnapore district, Nalhati in Birbhum, Buniyadpur in South Dinajpur and Dhupguri in Jalpaiguri districts. The party also registered a massive victory in Durgapur Municipal Corporation in Burdwan West district capturing all the 43 wards, besides Cooper's Camp where it won all the 12 seats.
In Haldia municipality also, the TMC got elected in all the 29 seats, according to the results declared. The election results were indicative of a paradigm shift in the state politics with the BJP emerging as the main challenger to the TMC, according to poll watchers.
The Left put up a poor show with the Forward Bloc, a front partner, winning a seat in Nalhati municipality. The Congress failed to win even a single seat in the polls.
In Haldia municipality, once considered as a Left bastion, the TMC won all the 29 wards securing more than 50 per cent of the total votes polled. Of the 16 seats in Dhupguri municipality in north Bengal, the TMC won 12 seats while the BJP captured four.
Out of the 14 wards in Buniyadpur, also in north Bengal, the TMC won 13 wards and the BJP bagged one seat. In Nalhati municipality, the TMC won 14 of the 16 wards, while the Left Front and an independent candidate won one ward each. In 18-member Panskura municipality, the TMC won 17 wards and the BJP managed to secure one ward. The TMC also won the by-election in a ward in Jhargram municipality.
"The results are a reflection of people's faith in the TMC government and a befitting reply to the canards spread against us," TMC secretary general Partha Chatterjee said, reacting to the outcome of the civic polls.
On the BJP's performance, senior TMC leader Gautam Deb said, "The Left Front has shifted its vote to the BJP. The vote share of the TMC is intact, rather we have increased our vote share.
"It is the Left which is having a tacit understanding with the BJP," he said. State BJP president Dilip Ghosh, however, said, "We all know that the TMC used money and muscle power to win the elections. We have seen how democracy was subverted by the TMC.
"In spite of a reign of terror, we have managed to win seats and come up to the second position," he said. The opposition called the civic election results a "farce", with the Congress and the Left stressing that it was "not a real reflection" of the people's mandate. State Congress president Adhir Chowdhury said the TMC was ruling was "autocratically" .
"What is the use of conducting elections in Bengal? The TMC doesn't allow free and fair elections. If an opposition candidate manages to win, they poach on him," he said. "We feel these results are not the reflection of people's mandate. After the elections were held, we had demanded cancellation of the entire elections as it was not free and fair," senior CPI(M) leader Sujan Chakraborty said.
2018
Zilla parishad, panchayat samite, gram panchayat elections: TMC 1, BJP 2
TMC leads Bengal rural polls, BJP a surprise No. 2, May 18, 2018: The Times of India
Trinamool Congress has gained an unprecedented stranglehold on Bengal’s three-tier village administrative system, gaining 95% of zilla parishad seats, 90% of panchayat samiti seats and 73% of gram panchayat seats that went to polls and for which results were declared.
More than a third of the seats this time did not see any contest and the Calcutta high court stayed announcement of those results in a directive last week. If and when those results are announced, the Trinamool’s victory percentage may only improve as most of the “walkover winners” this time are, according to officials, likely to be Trinamool candidates.
Trinamool Congress chief Mamata dedicated the massive victory to “the people of Bengal and martyrs’ families”.
The opposition cried foul, calling the 2018 panchayat election “a farce”. But, either way, Bengal seems to be headed largely for a bipolar fight in the 2019 Lok Sabha election as BJP has successfully emerged as party number two — even though a distant runner-up — in most of the districts. CPM and Congress stand virtually decimated in even their strongholds, finishing the race as fringe players fighting for third and fourth places, which is a firming up of the trend seen in the August 2017 civic polls for seven municipalities.
Villagers voted for ‘lotus’ in large numbers in Alipurduar, Jalpaiguri, Jhargram, Purulia and parts of West Midnapore and even Birbhum, which stood out for the large number of uncontested seats, where BJP won more than 20% of gram panchayats that went to vote. Analysts read in this a growing indication of dissent against Trinamool.
All the districts where BJP has done well have something in common: a substantial tribal population. The consolidation of anti-Trinamool votes behind BJP shows this bloc can disturb the settled political hierarchy in at least the three Lok Sabha seats named after the districts (Alipurduar, Jalpaiguri and Jhargram).
Trinamool, on the other hand, has successfully decimated Congress in Murshidabad and taken a massive lead in Malda and North Dinajpur — all erstwhile Congress strongholds — which means it will be in pole position in as many as six Lok Sabha seats (Murshidabad, Behrampore, Jangipur, Malda Uttar, Malda Dakshin and Raiganj) next year.
2019
Bhatpara: BJP wins
Sanjib Chakraborty, June 5, 2019: The Times of India
BJP gets its first civic body after Lok Sabha polls
Bhatpara:
BJP took control of the Bhatpara municipality in North 24 Parganas and promptly elected TMC-turned-BJP councillor Sourav Singh as its chairman. Bhatpara is the first civic body in Bengal to come under BJP’s control after the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.Sixteen of the 22 TMC councillors who had voted against chairman Arjun Singh in the no-trust vote held two months ago switched sides to upend the results.
Bhatpara municipality has been in the midst of a political see-saw since March 14 when chairman Arjun Singh dumped TMC to join BJP.
2021
Kolkata Municipal Corporation elections
Dec 22, 2021: The Times of India
Trinamool Congress won 134 of the 144 seats in Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) elections with a 72% vote share that reflected the afterglow of its assembly poll landslide eight months ago. In a first, KMC will now have 68 women councillors, 64 of them from TMC. This works out to 47% of the seats in the House.
Kolkata’s next mayor will be decided on Thursday, Mamata Banerjee said after trends showed TMC was on its way to the best showing by any party in a KMC poll.
BJP’s Kol vote share dips from May high of 20% to Dec low of 9%
Kolkata is our pride...The elections were like a festival. This is a win for democracy...,” the CM said before leaving for Guwahati to offer prayers at Kamakhya temple. “BJP bho-katta (the BJP has been decimated) by the people, CPM no-patta (the CPM has not been acknowledged), and the Congress is sandwiched between the BJP and the CPM,” she said. The results had an element of inevitability and predictability, with Trinamool building on its organisation and taking advantage of opposition parties’ listlessness since its spectacular showing in the assembly polls last May.
The Left won 11% votes. BJP saw its Kolkata vote share dip from a May high of 20% to a December low of 9%. BJP will now have three representatives in the new KMC. Congress won 4.4% of the vote share, which translated into two seats. A comparative analysis of the May and December vote share of Trinamool, BJP and the Left makes one thing clear: the votes gained by the saffron party in May, said to have gone to it from the LF kitty, now seem to have made their way to Trinamool. The Left Front and Congress finished second in 65 and 16 of KMC’s 144 wards, respectively, with BJP being the runner-up in 48 seats.
All 16 KMC boroughs will now Trinamool chairpersons. Independents won three seats but, by the end of Tuesday, all of them had expressed their desire to join Trinamool.
2022
Bhekutia Samabay Samiti elections, Nandigram I
Cooperative Society seats/September
Sep 19, 2022: The Times of India
Nandigram : BJP won the tension-filled Bhekutia Samabay Samiti elections in Nandigram I, which had been a Trinamool bastion till2021 Bengal assembly polls. BJP bagged 11 of the 12 cooperative society seats, while Trinamool took one, reportsSumanMandal.
The win gave BJP a muchneeded boost after losing two cooperative polls—in Nandigram II’s Birulia and Contai’s Mahisda—and quite a few madrassa boards just a month ago.
The Bhekutia polls were keenly fought in the spare-noquarter political battle between BJP and Trinamool, with both parties trading charges that “outsiders” were drafted to rig the results. Police had to chase away supporters of both parties to maintain peace during voting.
“We wanted peaceful polls. But BJP used muscle power and brought outsiders. They took voters to polling booths and made them vote for BJP,” said Trinamool Nandigram block president Bappaditya Kar. BJP’s Meghnad Pal countered that it was Trinamool that “brought people from outside” and “mountedtension. ”
2022: cooperative bodies
Dec 24, 2022: The Times of India
Nandigram : Trinamool Congress swept a bitterly fought agri-cooperative body poll in Nandigram-2 block, winning all 12 seats, reports Suman Mandal.
With both TMC and BJP refusing to cede an inch, the election for the Bheturia agri-cooperative body turned violent with both parties claiming that five of their supporters were injured and had to be hospitalised. Rapid Action Force (RAF) personnel were deployed and a police picket was posted in the area. Sporadic clashes, which were reported from 11am, continued late after the poll results were declared.
TMC spokesperson Kunal Ghosh questioned why “outsiders” were imported by BJP from Nandigram-1 and Khejuri for a cooperative body poll. He alleged an “underhand nexus” between BJP, CPM and Congress for the poll.
The results reflect that Bengal BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari is losing ground in his Nandigram assembly constituency, headded. Adhikari, however, said: “People do not vote in cooperative polls, the stakeholders do. This is for the first time we (BJP) are contesting these polls. We have won some, fought others closely. TMC wants to gobble up everything. They are doing justthat. ”
TMC and BJP had fielded candidates for all 12 seats.
Urban civic bodies
A
February 15, 2022: The Times of India
Kolkata: Trinamool won with an overwhelming majority all four municipal corporations that voted last weekend, reinforcing the party’s grip on Bengal’s five of the biggest cities. BJP won just 12 seats in the four civic bodies, which undermines its growth as the state’s main opposition party.
Trinamool won 39 of 41 seats in the politically significant Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation, 91 of 106 in the state’s second largest city Asansol, 37 of 47 in north Bengal’s biggest city Siliguri and 31 of Chandernagore’s 33 seats. The party already has a 135-out-of-144 majority in Kolkata corporation.
TMC gets boost in N Bengal, where BJP made big gains in ’21
BJP didn’t win any in either Bidhannagar or Chandernagore and managed single-digit figures in Asansol (seven) and Siliguri (five) — keeping with the slide since the 2021 assembly polls. Voters of Bidhannagar and Chandernagore relegated the party to the third position, behind the Left Front in terms of percentage of votes (8.3% in both). BJP was in second place in Siliguri, where it got a sizeable 23.2% votes, and Asansol (17%). But here, too, the gap with TMC was yawning. “I wish we become more humble, capable and committed to working for the people with every victory. I plead with every Trinamool worker not to react to instigations and keep celebrations civilised with only one slogan: the Trinamool thanks everyone,” Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee said.
This is the first time TMC will be forming the Siliguri Municipal Corporation board. Besides, the Siliguri win will likely allow Trinamool to consolidate in north Bengal, where BJP led in the 2021 assembly polls.
BJP’s slide in Bengal would be worrying for its leadership as the party fancied itself as the principal challenger to TMC till last year’s assembly polls.
B
March 3, 2022: The Times of India
Kolkata: Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress on Wednesday made a nearclean sweep of elections to Bengal’s urban civic bodies, winning 102 of the 108 municipalities that went to polls and blanking out the opposition in 35 of them.
BJP failed to retain a single municipality in a rout made worse by the party’s performance in the pocket boroughs of its Bengal stalwarts, including leader of the opposition Suvendu Adhikari (Contai), state chief Sukanta Majumdar (Balurghat), MP and ex-state party chief Dilip Ghosh (Kharagpur) and fellow MP Arjun Singh (Bhatpara). BJP was below-par in all 28 municipalities of north Bengal, the one region that had helped it save face in the assembly polls last year.
While Trinamool won 63% of the votes cast in Sunday's poll, a more striking subplot was the Left Front finishing with 13. 5%, ahead of BJP's 13. 4% and Congress’s 5%. It was the first time since 2016 that the Left polled more votes, although marginal, than BJP in a major Bengal election. Another first in at least four decades was the performance of Independents, who fared better than the three main opposition parties. Trinamool won 1,870 seats across Bengal (updated till 8 pm) to BJP’s 63, the Left's 55 and Congress’s 59, but Independents — most of them Trinamool rebels who had been denied tickets — wrested a total of 119 seats.
“People have inspired us to work more. They have blessed us,” CM Mamata said after the results started coming in. “We have even greater responsibility now,” she said.
BJP’s Hooghly MP Locket Chatterjee said on social media that the party needed “serious introspection”.
2023
Rural
A
July 13, 2023: The Times of India
Kolkata: Bengal’s violencemarred rural vote gave Trinamool Congress a massive, morale-boosting mandate, going into next year’s big Lok Sabha battle — all 20 zilla parishads, 317 of the 341 panchayat samitis, and 2,644 of the 3,317 gram panchayats at stake.
Second-placed BJP won six panchayat samitis and 220 gram panchayats. Left finished with just two samitis and 38 panchayats, while Congress managed to win only four panchayats. Trinamool made inroads into the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe pocket boroughs of BJP that had given the latter eight of its 18 Lok Sabha seats in 2019.
TNN
B
Pinak Priya Bhattacharya, Suman Mandal & Sanjib Chakraborty, July 13, 2023: The Times of India
Trinamool’s panchayat poll juggernaut in Bengal rolled into the fortresses of Union junior ministers Nisith Pramanik, John Barla and Shantanu Thakur on Wednesday, exposing faultlines in the BJP troika’s vote base. In Nandigram, the home turf of leader of the opposition Suvendu Adhikari, BJP just about managed a slender lead over the all-conquering TMC. BJP lost all five gram panchayat seats in Barla’s borough, the Lakhipara tea garden belt. The Union junior minister for minority affairs alleged rigging as the reason for the setback, saying the ballot boxes kept in the strongroom were replaced. He claimed a mismatch in photos of the ballot boxes to back his charge of tampering. Barla’s constituency Alipurduar has been a BJP stronghold since the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. The saffron party also fared poorly in Thakurnagar’s Matua belt, the home of Bongaon MP and Union minister of state for ports, shipping and waterways Shantanu Thakur. The latter and his brother Subrata Thakur, BJP’s Gaighata MLA, reside at Ichhapur gram panchayat (No II) of Gaighata block. TMC candidate Rita Mandal, who has never been defeated since 1998, maintained her grip on Ichhapur. In Bongaon subdivision, TMC won 34 gram panchayats, while BJP bagged four.
In Cooch Behar, the stronghold of Union junior home mi- nister Pramanik, BJP was trailing TMC till late Wednesday. Of the 2,507 gram panchayat seats in the district, TMC took 1,834 and BJP had 615.
While BJP gained initially, winning nine gram panchayats with TMC at 7, polling trends started changing late Tuesday. In Nandigram I, TMC bagged 15 of the 30 panchayat samitis while BJP won 14.
C
July 13, 2023: The Times of India
Kolkata: Combined with the 2022 urban local body election results, where opposition parties finished with victories in less than 10 of the 110-odd municipalities that went to polls, Trinamool Congress now controls about nine out of every 10 local bodies across Bengal’s cities, towns and villages. “It’s TMC all the way in rural Bengal. I want to thank the people for their love, affection and support towards TMC. This election has proved that only TMC resides in the heart of the people of the state,” CM Mamata Banerjee wrote on Facebook.
Congress and the Left Front together got about 1,700 gram panchayat seats in Murshidabad, compared to TMC’s 2,800-odd. Indian Secular Front put up a semblance of a fight in some areas such as Bhangar in South 24-Parganas.
Unlike the 2018 rural polls, when CM Mamata Banerjee's party had won one in every three seats uncontested (34. 8%), it got a walkover in only 9. 8% of the seats this time around. Trinamool saw in this an opportunity to test the ground. “We missed out on the chance to assess ourselves and the opposition’s strengths and weaknesses in 2018, and that cost us some seats in the general elections next year,” a party veteran said.
Trinamool had a 63% vote share and BJP 13%, a percentage point behind CPM's, in last year’s urban local body polls. If it finishes with a similar vote share in the rural belt, BJP will have to work overtime to retain its 2019 tally of 18 Lok Sabha seats, sources said.
