The Trinamul Congress wrested control of the Suri municipality in Birbhum on Friday with all 15 words going uncontested, making it the fourth fourth civic body that the ruling party has gained control even before the February 27 polls.

Similar victories have been reported from Cooch Behar’s Dinhata, in the north-eastern flank of the state, to the deep south where Budge Budge in South 24-Parganas, barely 28km from the state capital, is also in the party's kitty.

Of the 108 municipalities in the state which will go to polls on February 27, the ruling Trinamul has already established a majority in four, a feat that no political party has achieved in Bengal ever since the civic polls are being held.

At work is the intimidatory tactic of the ruling party, which gave it 34 per cent of the panchayat seats uncontested in the 2018 rural polls.

In 1977, after the Left Front came to power, when the civic polls were held, the Opposition Congress bagged 17 municipalities.

Late on Wednesday night, the CPM nominee from Budge Budge municipality’s ward 14 was abducted only to be released later and has locked himself indoor since. The nominee, an advocate, also had his family threatened allegedly by miscreants backed by the ruling Trinamul.

The advocate is among eight other nominees from the Left in the 20-member board of the Budge Budge municipality, where apart from Trinamul, only a handful of independents were allowed to file nominations for the polls. All the eight Left nominees have been told to withdraw their nomination.

“Armed goons went to their homes this morning and threatened again. We are trying to convince them not to withdraw from the fray, but these are not criminals. How long can they face threats made to their families?” asked Shamik Lahiri, CPM South 24-Parganas district secretary. “Some of the nominees are teachers, some are jute mill workers. Neither the district police nor the state election commission have taken any action. Let them announce the name of the winning candidates instead of carrying on with this farce.”

The intimidation has been widespread in Budge Budge, a part of the Diamond Harbour Lok Sabha constituency, represented by Trinamul’s All India general secretary and Mamata Banerjee’s nephew Abhishek Banerjee.

Of the six municipalities where elections will be held in South 24-Parganas district, the Left is contesting in most of the seats barring Joynagar-Majilpur where it had supported the Congress to form the board after the 2015 civic polls. The Left is contesting in two of the 13 wards, leaving the rest to the Congress.

The advocate-nominee’s abduction was one in a series of events that have ensured the Trinamul’s victory even before the nomination process is completed.

In Birbhum’s Sainthia, Trinamul has won uncontested 13 of the 16 wards, and all the 16 wards in Dinhata.

“Udayan Guha is the most successful of Trinamul leaders. He ensured the Opposition did not find any space in the civic polls,” said Sujan Chakraborty, CPM central committee member.

On Thursday, the Bengal BJP held a demonstration outside the state election office in Calcutta’s Sarojini Naidu Sarani.,

The leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari said democracy was being suffocated inside a gas chamber in Bengal. “Our party nominees were stopped from filing nominations in Dinhata, Bolpur. In Budge Budge our cadres have been stopped from campaigning. Only the ruling party has rights to participate in the poll process in Bengal,” Adhikari said.