West Bengal civic polls: Left decimated but improves vote share

CPI(M) student leader Srijan Bhattacharya said, “People have realised that the CPI(M) is the only force that can defeat the TMC. In the future, we will do that.”

Left front leaders said if the trend of an increase in its vote share continues, it will soon emerge the principal challenger to the TMC.

Chief Minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee said her party was not “bothered” about runners-up. “The CPM, BJP and Congress are ‘jogai, madhai and godai’ (three brothers). Sometimes, one gets the second position, and in the next voting, they come third. We are not bothered about that. We are only thinking about our position.”

In the Bidhannagar civic elections, the Left Front accounted for 10.7% of the polled votes against TMC’s staggering 73.95%, BJP’s 8.37% and Congress’s 3.42%.

In Chandannagar, the party’s vote share increased to 26.40% from 18.5% in the last Assembly polls. The BJP came third with a 9.80% vote share.

In Asansol, the party came third with a vote share of 10.04% behind BJP’s 17.02%. The Congress could bag only 4.18% of the polled votes. In the Assembly polls last year, the BJP had won two constituencies in Asansol.

In Siliguri too, the Left Front with a 17.39% vote share trailed TMC (47.14%) and the BJP (23.24%), but ahead of the Congress (5.32%). BJP’s sitting MLA Shankar Ghosh also lost and ranked third. In the last Assembly polls, the saffron party had bagged the Siliguri seat with more than a 50% vote share. CPI (M) central committee member and outgoing Siliguri mayor Ashok Bhattacharya termed the defeat “disaster”.