Perched atop a pile of 134 wards of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation, the Trinamul tricolour with the twin flower emblem stood the tallest on Tuesday, as 71.9 per cent of the city residents voted in favour of the party, giving the Trinamul 134 of the 144 wards.

Bengal chief minister and Trinamul chief Mamata Banerjee, who is seriously pursuing her national ambitions, might just hope the flag be visible at least from poll-bound Lucknow, if not Delhi, on which she has set her eyes.

Graphic: Tiyasa Das

“We thank Maa-Mati-Manush for supporting us. The more people support us, the more our heads will bow before them,” Mamata told newspersons at her Kalighat residence.

“Heartiest congratulation to all candidates for your victory in the KMC elections. Remember to serve people with utmost diligence and gratitude. I wholeheartedly thank every single resident of KMC for putting their faith on us, once again,” Mamata tweeted.

After Mamata and Diamond Harbour MP Abhishek, a third family member from 30B Harish Chatterjee, Kajari Banerjee, social worker and wife of Mamata’s brother Kartik, made her debut in electoral politics.

The incumbent Mayor in the outgoing civic board, which has been under an administrator for over a year since polls were deferred, Firhad Hakim too won comfortably from ward 87 and is now leading the race for the Mayor’s chair.

Soon after her jubilant victory in the Assembly polls seven months ago, Mamata had announced the policy of one-man-one-post. The policy, however, was junked ahead of Sunday’s civic polls, as Mamata fielded six legislators and an MP to contest for the post of councillors. All of them have won from their respective wards.

Till now, the BJP has won three wards, the Left and the Congress two and three went to others.

For the BJP, two incumbent councillors Meena Devi Purohit, who had served as deputy mayor with the late Subrata Mukherjee as mayor from the Trinamul, two decades ago, and Vijay Ojha retained their wards. Sajal Ghosh, son of Pradip Ghosh, who has covered the entire spectrum from the centrist Congress to right-wing BJP with a stopover in Trinamul, won from the ward 50 in a keen contest.

From the Congress, Santosh Pathak, whose son Rohit was arrested on the day of polling _ other party leaders and workers including former state youth Congress chief Amitabha Chakraborty were assaulted _ retained his ward. The Congress nominee from ward 137 won the seat by 1,300 votes. In the Assembly elections, Trinamul was leading in the ward by 7,476 votes.

The Left nominees from the CPM in ward 103 and CPI in ward 92 emerged victorious.

The only solace for the Left, which has been bleeding under the double onslaught of the Trinamul and the BJP, was that it managed to increase it’s vote share. Though the CPM has only one councillor in the new civic board, it’s own vote share was 9.02 per cent, marginally ahead of the BJP which got 8.9 per cent. The Congress received 4.47 per cent votes.