Mamata wins wards, loses face in civic polls

The Trinamool Congress won four of the six civic bodies for which results were announced today. However, the party that had confidently gone to polls on Sunday hoping to silence both the opposition CPM and ally Congress with its performance lost the two seats that mattered: the CPM retained the prestigious Haldia municipality, located next to Nandigram, while the Congress romped home 11-1 in Cooper’s Camp.

Not only do the results show an erosion in the TMC’s support base since the Assembly polls a year ago, it is also clear that whether she likes it or not, Mamata Banerjee would do well to keep the Congress as an election partner. The civic elections were the first test of their individual strengths since the Assembly polls, and in a large number of wards, Congress votes made up for the winning margin of opposition candidates.

However, the TMC did manage to wrest the Durgapur and Dhupguri municipalities from the Left while retaining Nalhati and Panskura.

Preliminary reports show that the TMC vote share went down in 22 of the 129 wards (in the six municipalities) where it had a lead during the Assembly polls.

Even the CPM didn’t expect to retain Haldia, with its local strongman Lakshman Seth behind bars on charges of murder. The party’s organisational set-up was in a shambles, destroyed by the TMC’s aggressive inroads. TMC MP Suvendu Adhikari, the architect of the party’s Nandigram movement, had predicted a clean sweep, 26-0, for his party in Haldia.

Apart from its location near Nandigram — which was the epicentre of the TMC’s turnaround story in Bengal — Haldia is also the showpiece of whatever industry is left in the state. All the trade union units here have shifted sides from CITU to the All India Trinamool Trade Union Congress, while all the MLAs, MPs from here belong to the TMC and the party controls all the zilla parishads.