Trinamool gains ‘absolute’ control over rural Bengal, opposition cries foul

KOLKATA: The 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 for polling and for which results were declared till Thursday night.
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 chief Mamata Banerjee dedicated the massive victory to “the people of Bengal and martyrs’ families”. The opposition cried foul, calling the polls “a farce”. But, either way, Bengal seems to be headed for a largely bipolar fight in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls as the BJP has successfully emerged as party number two — even though a distant number two— in most of the districts. The CPM and the Congress stand virtually decimated even in their strongholds, finishing 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 BJP 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 candidates won more than 20% gram panchayats that went to vote. Analysts read in this a growing indication of dissent against the Trinamool despite doles for the underprivileged.
Districts where BJP performed well have something in common: a large tribal population. The rallying of anti-Trinamool votes behind BJP shows this bloc can disturb the settled political hierarchy in at least three Lok Sabha seats named after the districts—Alipurduar, Jalpaiguri and Jhargram.
The Trinamool, on the other hand, has successfully decimated the 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.
The Trinamool also maintained its stranglehold over the districts around Kolkata — North and South 24-Parganas, Howrah and Hooghly — though its juggernaut did stumble in pockets, like Singur in Hooghly and Bhangar in South 24-Parganas.
The BJP increased it tally from eight gram panchayat seats to 28 in Hooghly’s Singur as prominent Singur land stir leader Naba Kumar Ghosh lost. In Bhangar’s Kashipur, five of the nine Independent (Naxal-backed Save Live Livelihood Environment Protection Committee) candidates, who created electoral history by filing their nomination on WhatsApp, won. But their bete noire, local Trinamool leader Arabul Islam, now in police custody, and his family members, too, won panchayat samity seats.
Independents caused some headache for the trinamool in Coochbehar’s Dinhata block as well. But, here, they were backed by the Trinamool Youth Congress and put up a strong fight against officials Trinamool candidates, wresting gram panchayat and panchayat samiti seats and heading for a win in a zilla parishad seat.
But the counting process, too, saw some violence, a common occurrence right from the day of the panchayat poll notification on March 31. A Trinamool activist was caught on camera stamping ballot papers within the counting centre in Nadia’s Majdia when he found that the CPM candidate was leading in the local gram panchayat seat. This incident did not add to the death toll but the cat-and-mouse game between cops, who burst tear gas shells, and party workers —armed with bombs — was perhaps a fitting finale to an election season that saw 27 people being killed from across the political spectrum.