The results of the West Bengal panchayat elections, which were held on 14 May, will be announced today. Stay tuned for latest updates.
Elections in India : The ruling Trinamool Congress looks set for a resounding victory in rural Bengal after nearly eight hours of counting of votes in the three-tier state Panchayat elections, with control over 80 per cent of the Gram Panchayat seats. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has emerged a distant second in almost all the districts.
According to the latest trend, Trinamool won in 20 out of 825 Zilla Parishad seats and was comfortably leading in another 22, while the opposition parties drew a blank. The state ruling party also came out victorious in at least 160 out of 6,125 Panchayat Samiti seats and were leading in another 173 constituencies, the latest poll result data released by the State Election Commission (SEC) said.
The BJP and the left managed to bag one Panchayat Samiti seats each. The BJP managed to move ahead or win a section of Panchayat seats, especially in Murshidabad and Jhargram districts, while the Left and Congress were pushed to margins. The Trinamool Congress leadership, however, refused to celebrate as a lot of counting still remained.
Also Read → Karnataka Election Results 2018
“It is a massive victory for Trinamool. The opposition thought giving outside support to Independent candidates would reap benefits for them. It has been proved wrong as all of them have been wiped clean. People voted for Trinamool Congress and its leader Mamata Banerjee,” West Bengal Food and Supplies Minister Jyotipriyo Mullick said.
Sporadic incidents of violence over the election results were reported from certain districts like Nadia where a group of miscreants allegedly ran away with ballot boxes. The counting of votes was halted for almost three hours in Nadia’s Majhdia after allegations of tampering with the ballot papers were received.
In Birbhum, BJP and Trinamool Congress activists clashed with each other outside a counting station. The police had to resort to baton charge to disperse the mob. In West Bengal’s Bhangar, which has been on the boil over the construction of a power grid sub-station by the state government over the last one year, the Independent candidates backed by Jomi-Jibika-Bastutantra O Poribesh Rokkha Committee (committee for protecting life, livelihood, ecology and environment) won five out of eight Gram Panchayat seats, wherever voting took place.
According to the state administration, 12 people lost their lives on the polling day among which death of six people were confirmed to be due to poll violence. However, opposition political parties and a section of the media claimed the death toll on the polling day had gone up to 21, while five more people died the next day.
