Bengal rural polls: Trinamool continues its victory chariot

Kolkata: Trinamool Congress continues to surge ahead of its rivals even as the counting for the panchayat polls is underway in West Bengal districts.

Counting of votes polled for all three-tier panchayat system in the state got underway on Tuesday morning.

According to State Election Commission sources, the final picture will be clear by this afternoon or  evening.

Till 12 p.m., Trinamool had already bagged 563 of the total 928 seats at the Zilla Parishad level —  the highest tier in the three-tier panchayat system of the state.

BJP with 24 seats in its credit is in the second position.

Left Front- Congress alliance is in the third position, bagging a total of 13 seats, with Left Front at five and Congress at eight.

The others, which include All India Secular Front (AISF) and the independents, stand at two.

Trinamool Congress has maintained equal supremacy at the panchayat samiti level, which is the second tier in the three-tier panchayat system by bagging 5, 432 seats.

It is being followed by the BJP is in the second position winning 601 panchayat samiti seats.

The Left Front- Congress alliance together winning just 305 seats at this tier are in the distant third position, with 140 seats going in favour of the Left Front and 165 seats in favour of Congress.

Others have won just 50 seats in this tier. Trinamool Congress’s victory chariot is steadily running in the lowest tier of the panchayat system, which is gram panchayat, where the state’s ruling party has already won 41,665 seats.

While the BJP is in the second position winning 9,368 seats,  the Left Front has bagged 2,989 seats in this tier, Congress stands at 2,542.

A total of 2,233 seats have gone in favour of the others.

There had been a tie in as many as 337 seats, where the toss of the coin would decide the winner at a stage.