The ruling Trinamool Congress continued with its winning spree clinching on Wednesday four out of seven municipal boards that went to what the Opposition parties called “farcical elections” marred by rampant violence and booth-capturing.
Though the BJP, along with its bigger partner Gorkha Janmukti Morcha, won three municipalities of Darjeeling, Kurseong and Kalimpong —where voters tended to ignore Mamata Banerjee’s political largesse that came in the form of the sub-divisional town being made a district — it conceded the victory to the Trinamool in Mirik a small Hill town and the tiniest board in the country with nine members amid complaints of fraud during counting process.
In the plains at Raiganj, the TMC swept the scene winning 24 out of the 27 seats defeating even the sitting Congress chairman and MlA Mohit Sengupa by a meager 45 votes. The BJP could win only one seat in the board while the left-Congress alliance won two.
At Domkal municipality in Murshidabad district bordering Bangladesh, the TMC won 18 seats while the left-Congress won three out of which two members switched to the ruling outfit within moments of clinching the seat following what the Congress leaders called “dire threats and lure of money.”
Curiously Anisur Rehman a former Minister and the sitting CPI(M), MlA from Domkal had been winning the seat for the past three decades and had withstood the Mamata wave since 2011 till 2016.
At Pujali in South 24 Parganas too, the Trinamool swept the polls as the Congress and the BJP won only one and two seats respectively.
Incidentally all the three parties had pulled out of the electoral fray by noon of May 14 when elections were held following complaints of rampant violence, bombing and booth-capturing.
While Mamata subsequently tweeted thanking “Maa-Maati-Maanush for reposing faith in me and affording us such a commendable victory,” the BJP, Congress and the left dismissed
the results as “fallout of violence.”