The Trinamul Congress now seems inexorable in elections, recording a crushing victory in Kolkata Municipal Corporation elections, augmenting its tally. TMC swept 134 of 144 wards of the city, bagging 72 per cent of vote share.

The BJP, which had emerged as the main Opposition party in the Assembly polls seven months back, got three seats and CPI-M and Congress got two each. Independents got three seats and declared that they would join the TMC for “better development of their respective wards”, which will take their tally to 137, an all-time high. The Front has a vote share of 11.89 per cent higher than the saffron party’s 9.21 per cent; Congress bagged 4.12 per cent votes. Infact, the Front has managed one per cent higher vote share than in Assembly elections.

Advertisement

In 2015, TMC had won in 114 wards and Front had won in 15 seats, BJP in seven, Congress five and independents in three wards. Chief Minister and party chief Mamata Banerjee said: “It is a victory of democracy and the people. The election was held like a festival. People exercised their franchise peacefully.” “We promise to work even harder in the coming days. Other national parties also contested but they were all defeated. BJP, Left and Congress are nowhere. This is a mandate of the people, for the people, by the people. We won a landslide victory because I am a daughter of the soil. We work on the ground, not in the skies. We do what we say. We will work for urban, semi urban and rural areas. Kolkata will show the way to the people of
the country,” she said following which she left for Assam to offer her prayers at Kamakhya temple.

The BJP called the results a farce. Spokesperson Samik Bhattacharya said, “We are surprised. TMC should have won all the seats given the kind of violence and booth-rigging that took place.” Miss Banerjee held a high-level meeting at her Kalighat office to discuss implementation of various promises made in the manifesto. The KMC Mayor will be named on 23 December, she said. The biggest winner was TMC’s Faiz Ahmed Khan, whose victory margin was 62,045 votes in Ward No. 66. TMC’s Ananya Banerjee won by a massive margin of 37,661 votes from ward 109 and in ward 108, TMC’s Sushanta Ghosh won by a margin of 16,000 votes. Kolkata South Lok Sabha MP Mala Roy won from Ward No. 88 for the fifth consecutive term.

Outgoing Mayor and minister Firhad Hakim, MLAs Debashis Kumar, Ratna Chatterjee, Paresh Pal, Atin Ghosh and Debabrata Majumdar won comfortably. BJP’s Meena Devi Purohit won from Ward No. 22 for the sixth consecutive term; Vijay Ojha retained his seat in ward 23 and Sajal Ghosh won from Ward No. 50. Two former TMC leaders Sacchidananda Chatterjee and Tanima Chatterjee, who contested independently, lost.

TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee said: “People of Kolkata have once again proved that politics of hate and violence have no place in Bengal”. According to SEC, 116 BJP, 97 Left Front and 112 Congress candidates had to forfeit their deposits.