All parties see the election as a bellwether for the region’s 2024 parliamentary election
Post Date – 11:45 PM, Tuesday – July 23rd 11th
Calcutta: The TMC looks set to sweep through violent rural polls, maintaining the mandate it won in parliamentary polls two years ago, with a seemingly undisputed lead in the results announced so far by the state electoral commission.
The ruling TMC had won 28,985 gram panchayat seats as of 10:30 p.m. Tuesday, according to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and was ahead by 1,540 seats. Its closest rival, the Bharatiya Janata Party, won 7,764 seats and was ahead with 417. A total of 63,229 gram panchayat seats were held in all elections.
The Left Front won 2,468 seats, of which the CPI(M) won 2,409. The left currently leads by 260 seats. The Congress Party won 2,022 seats and was ahead with 139 seats.
Other parties won 725 seats, leading by 23 seats, while the Independence Party, which includes the TMC rebels, won 1,656 seats, leading by 104 seats.
The ruling TMC won 2,155 Panchayat samiti seats while leading by 493. The Bharatiya Janata Party won 214 seats, ahead of 113 seats; the CPI won 47 seats, ahead of the other 48 seats; the Congress Party won 38 seats, ahead of 23 seats. The election resulted in 9,728 Panchayat Samiti seats.
The TMC has also won all 77 Zila Parishad election results announced so far and leads in the other 92 seats, with the Communist Party of India (CPI(M)) leading by five seats, the Congress Party leading by one seat, and the Bharatiya Janata Party ( BJP) ahead by 10 seats. There are a total of 928 Zila Parishad seats.
Trinamool leader Abhishek Banerjee on Tuesday thanked rural Bengal for voting for the party and said the opposition’s “No Vote Mamata” campaign had turned into “Vote Mamata Now”. , and paved the way for “the party’s unwavering success in the next election.” This year’s Lok Sabha poll”.
All parties see the election as a barometer for the direction of the region’s 2024 parliamentary elections.
Violence at Saturday’s village council polls has left at least 15 people dead, 11 of them from the ruling TMC. The death toll from poll-related incidents has reached 33 since elections were announced last month, with the ruling party accounting for 60 percent of those deaths.
Allegations of vote tampering and violence by all parties forced the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to order a new vote for 696 seats on Monday, which passed more or less peacefully. The Kolkata High Court deployed a central police force on both election day and counting day.
Voter turnout was 80.71 percent on Saturday, compared to 69.85 percent at 696 polling stations in West Bengal as of 5 pm, with re-voting on Monday.
While rural Bangladesh has a long history of electoral violence, with 40 people dying in a single day of voting during the Panchayat elections in 2003, widespread media coverage of the violence has captured national attention this year.
CV Ananda Bose, the governor who traveled to Delhi to report the violence, told reporters that “political parties should realize that elections are not a test of personal strength”.
Counting of votes for the three-tier panchayat vote began peacefully at 8 am on Tuesday under tight security with nearly 74,000 seats, including 9,730 panchayat samiti seats in addition to gram panchayat seats, officials said and 928 zilla parishad seats.
Counting has been carried out at 339 locations in 22 regions and could continue until Wednesday. South 24 Parganas has the highest number of counting centers with 28 and Kalimpong has the least number of 4. Some areas in the north are also facing severe weather.
“The counting started at 8 a.m. and could continue for the next two days. It will take time to count the votes and compile the results,” an SEC official said.
In Darjeeling, with 598 seats in Darjeeling and 281 in Kalimpong, Bharatiya Gorkha Prajatantrik Morcha (BGPM) leads in many districts and looks likely to become the new representative of Bengal hills.
All counting locations were guarded by the State Armed Police and Central Forces, and restraining orders were imposed outside the venue in accordance with Article 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure to avoid any unpleasant incidents. There are a total of 767 vaults in 22 districts.
Large numbers of supporters of the candidates gathered at the various centers to ensure the counting of votes was done correctly.
In various districts, TMC supporters celebrated by dancing and painting each other the green color of the party’s choice.
As the initial trends started pouring in, a war of words broke out between the TMC and the BJP, which accused the ruling party of “making a last-ditch attempt to rob votes by preventing opposition agents from entering counting centres”.
“TMC thugs are desperately trying to steal election results by preventing BJP and other opposition parties’ counting agents and candidates from entering the counting centre. They are restricted from entering the venue and bombs are being thrown to intimidate the counting staff,” Opposition Leader Suvendu Adhikari said.
TMC spokesman Kunal Ghosh refuted the allegations, saying “they feel they have failed to make baseless allegations.” He said: “Being rejected by people and feeling a shameful failure is One last time the BJP is trying to find lame excuses to make up for its own organizational failures.”
“We salute the people who, despite all these (obstacles), are still supporting the Left Front candidate,” said Mohd Salim, secretary of state for the Communist Party of India (M).
The CPI (M) leader has claimed that the ruling party has abused the police and administration to regain power.
ISF MLA Nawshad Siddique, who leads the newly formed political party, told PTI that “no matter what opportunity people have to exercise their right to vote under violence and intimidation, they will express their opinions against the ruling party.” He added, “The myth that a certain community is a vote bank has been been proven wrong.”
A total of 5.67 billion people living in the state’s rural areas are eligible to decide the fate of 206,000 candidates for the 73,887 seats in the three-tier voting system.
Unlike previous elections, in which candidates from opposition parties captured more than 90 percent of the seats, rural polls in 2018 saw the ruling TMC win 34 percent of seats without contest.
The ruling TMC won 90 percent of panchayat seats and all 22 zilla parishes in the 2018 rural polls. The election was marred by widespread violence, with the opposition claiming they were unable to submit nominations in several seats.
