Picking up from where it left in the last year’s Assembly elections, the ruling Trinamool Congress on Monday registered a thumping victory in municipal corporation elections of Siliguri, Asansol, Bidhannagar and Chandannagar.

The biggest news was that the TMC not only wrested Siliguri corporation from the Left but it also defeated the sitting MLA of the BJP Shankar Ghosh from a local ward. Ghosh  won the Siliguri seat in last year’s elections.

In Siliguri, the party won 37 seats while the BJP, the Left and the Congress won 5, 4 and 1 each in that order, while  in Asansol the victory was more profound with the ruling outfit winning 91 seats. The BJP won 7 and the Left and the Congress won 2 and 3 respectively.

In Chandannagar, the TMC won 31 seats. The Left won 1 and the BJP and the Congress could win none whereas in Bidhannagar adjacent to Kolkata TMC won 39 seats. Neither the BJP nor the Left could win a single seat whereas the Congress managed to win only one seat.

Thanking the people for the stupendous victory Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said, “It is once again an overwhelming victory of Ma, Mati, Manush. My heartiest congratulations to the people of Asansol, Bidhannagar, Siliguri and Chandannagar for having put their faith and confidence in All India Trinamool Congress candidates in the municipal corporation elections.”

While history continued to repeat insofar as the election results were concerned,  the Left Front showed signs of improvement clawing back to the second position in Chandannagar and Bidhannagar where they managed 27 per cent votes to TMC’s 59 per cent. At Bidhannagar too, the Left garnered 10.10 per cent votes while the BJP got 8.3 per cent in comparison to the TMC’s 73.9 per cent.

In Siliguri, Trinamool got 47 per cent votes whereas the BJP got 23.24 and the Left managed 18.28 per cent votes. Incidentally, the BJP had won the Siliguri Assembly seat less than a year ago. BJP’s local MLA Shankar Ghosh a CPI(M) discard failed to win in the corporation election.

In Asansol, the BJP came second in 53 wards whereas the Left bagged second place in 33 wards.

“While BJP State president Sukanto Majumdar said that it hardly mattered as to who won the polls as “in the name of elections they only staged a farce,” CPI(M)’s Sujan Chakrabarty said the trendsshowed that the people of Bengal had started to reject BJP.