Trinamul Congress Sweeps West Bengal Panchayat Election, Secures 20 Zilla Parishads

Kolkata/Berhampore: As the counting of votes of the West Bengal Panchayat Election continued even on Wednesday, ruling Trinamul Congress has appeared to have bagged all the 20 zilla parishads (ZP) apart from sweeping most of the Gram Panchayats (GP) and Panchayat Samitis (PS).

Though the state has 22 districts, 20 of them have them ZP each as Darjeeling and Kalimpong have a two-tier panchayat system, GP and PS, and come under the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration. Counting of votes in the ZPs started late on Tuesday evening after results of GP and PS were declared.

The 20 ZPs, which the ruling party retained, are Alipurduar, Coochbehar, Jalpaiguri, North Dinajpur, South Dinajpur, Malda, Murshidabad, Nadia, North 24 Parganas, South 24 Parganas, Howrah, Hooghly, Burdwan East, Burdwan West, East Midnapore, West Midnapore, Bankura, Birbhum, Purulia and Jhargram.

In Murshidabad ZP with 78 seats, the ruling party got 72, followed by Congress with 4 and CPI(M) with 2. It also won 22 out of 26 PS seats in the district, followed by the Left with 2 while the rest two had hung results. Among 250 GP seats, the TMC bagged 221, BJP and Congress won 2 each, Left got 5 while 20 remaining seats had hung results.