The Trinamul Congress on Tuesday bagged 134 of the 144 wards in the Calcutta Municipal Corporation elections, prompting Mamata Banerjee to hail the record sweep as a victory for democracy that would “show the way” to the entire nation.

While Trinamul won an astounding 93 per cent of the seats, the BJP managed only three wards and the Left and the Congress two each. Three Independent candidates also emerged victorious.

Trinamul pocketed a shade over 72 per cent of the votes polled, which was 21 per cent more than the 2015 figure and eclipsing the summer Assembly election’s performance by around 23 per cent. The BJP’s vote share slipped to 9.21 per cent from the 29 per cent this summer, falling below the Left, which got 11.89 per cent of the votes.

“The BJP bho-katta (cut off) by the people. The CPM no patta (attention) by the people. The Congress, sandwiched between the CPM and the BJP,” the Bengal chief minister said in her first reaction to the results on Tuesday afternoon, shortly before leaving for Guwahati where she offered prayers at the Kamakhya temple.

“This is a landslide victory because our sons and daughters of the soil, who work on the ground, we don’t talk about methods of working in the sky. What we promise, we deliver,” Mamata added.

The Trinamul chief said the election was a victory for democracy in a “festival of the people”.

“It further humbles us, makes us more submissive to the people. Calcutta and Bengal are our pride. Calcutta and Bengal will show the way for the rest of the nation and take it towards a place of pride… is what I believe,” Mamata said.

“Of course it is a victory for national politics also. Because the other national parties also contested against us, together — the BJP, the Congress and the CPM — and they were all defeated by the people. This is the verdict of the people, by the people and for the people. This mandate will further help us to do more and more work for the people.”

While much of what Mamata said about the verdict and the state of the Opposition, at least in Calcutta, is irrefutable, there are several upshots.
Trinamul sweep

Mamata’s party converted all 134 leads in the Assembly elections earlier this year into victories, finishing second in the remaining 10, with none of its candidates having to forfeit their deposit in Calcutta. This was a gain of 20 seats over the 2015 civic polls.

“There is no cause for undermining the significance of Trinamul’s victory. Everybody knew they were going to win these many seats,” said political observer Subhamoy Maitra, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute.

Maitra added: “There are various political reasons for that but a key factor certainly is offering to the poor programmes such as a universal basic income of some kind.”

BJP in decline

The BJP fell from leads in 51 wards in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and 12 in the Assembly elections earlier this year to just three wins in the 142 wards it contested. It is now back to where it had been in 2010, when too the party had won three CMC seats.

In the 139 seats the BJP lost, it finished third, or worse, in 97. Its candidates faced the ignominy of having to forfeit their deposit in 116 wards.

“The results unmistakably show that the BJP has bled further since the 2021 Assembly elections…. The BJP project has failed, at least for now, in the eyes of the electorate,” said psephologist Biswanath Chakraborty, a professor at Rabindra Bharati University.

“From 2016 to (earlier in) 2021, the BJP’s curve stayed largely up despite going nowhere close to the 200-plus claim (before the Assembly elections). But since the bypolls earlier this year, that curve has been downward. The opposite of that is being seen for the Left, even the Congress. A change in the larger trend seems to have begun. It would be much clearer, of course, when the elections to the remaining 111 civic bodies are held,” Maitra, the ISI professor, said.

Left gains

The Left, whose tally came down from 15 CMC seats in 2015 to leads in none of the wards in the 2021 Assembly elections, pouched two seats this time after leading in a few others over several rounds of counting during the day.

Despite contesting alone and in 128 wards, the Left finished second in 65.

Its vote share was close to 12 per cent, up from the 10 per cent it had managed this summer. Compared to the BJP, the Left’s candidates had to forfeit their deposit in 97 wards after contesting a lower number of seats.

Political scientists said the Left had never really been obliterated in Calcutta. According to them, the civic polls being fought on local issues, the ground-level presence of the Left — especially its social work during the peaks of the pandemic — had resonated with sections of the electorate.

The experts also pointed out that had the election not been marred by allegations of malpractice, the Left could have done better.

“Moreover, the Left’s interaction with the Congress, by way of an alliance, does not seem to be paying the dividends they had been hoping for. Instead, fighting separately as independent political entities in a so-called friendly way seems to be helping them,” Maitra said.
‘Malpractice’ niggle

The purported disregard for the high command’s diktat to ensure a clean election, said sections within Trinamul, was a fallout of the ward-level leadership’s urge to ensure thumping victories at any cost, resulting in suspiciously high margins in many wards. Trinamul’s candidates bagged over 93 per cent of the vote share in two wards, over 90 per cent in five, over 80 per cent in 26 and over 70 per cent in 42.

Several political scientists said Sunday’s incidents in the city ran counter to Trinamul-hired poll strategist Prashant Kishor’s doctrine of a hands-off approach to elections like civic polls that are inconsequential in the larger scheme, as 13 Opposition candidates claimed injury from attacks by the ruling party while 146 polling agents of Opposition parties alleged that they were kept away through “coercion”.

“Trinamul would’ve won emphatically anyway. The chance they got to have an unblemished election, when the rest of the country or even many parts of the world were watching the polls to the globally renowned city’s civic body, was squandered because of slight lapses in caution,” Maitra said.

“Had they been able to achieve that, it would have earned them praise nationally, even globally…. The seat count remains the same, but the alleged vitiation of the poll process has given the Opposition scope to find fault with the mandate, which was not the case across the state this summer. The buck for that stops with the leadership, because its inability to control the lower levels is unacceptable,” he added.