Bengal will see long overdue elections to 108 of its urban centres on Sunday, with Trinamul looking to further consolidate its clout in the state and nullify the BJP’s gains in 65 of the civic bodies in the 2021 Assembly election.

Most of these bodies should have gone to polls by 2020, but were put on hold because of the pandemic by the state election commission. Trinamul sources privately said the deferral had largely to do with the reluctance to hold them before the Assembly election in the wake of the BJP’s unprecedented gains in Bengal in the 2019 general elections.

But in the wake of Trinamul’s historic mandate of the 2021 Assembly election, thumping victories in all seven Assembly bypolls later in the year, and the sweep of the five municipal corporations thereafter, the overall political outcome now appears a foregone conclusion. Counting will be on March 2, but of the 108, Mamata Banerjee’s party has already won four uncontested.

With the judiciary observing closely and the Opposition looking to pounce on every instance of electoral malpractice, Trinamul's main challenge is ensuring a free, fair and peaceful election so that its victories do not get tainted by accusations of foul play.

It also remains to be seen whether the 200-odd expelled leaders of Trinamul, still in the fray as Independents, cast a damper.

The broad contours of Sunday's contest at a glance:

Municipalities: 108 in 20 of the state’s 23 districts

Wards: 2,276

Candidates: 8,160

Booths: 12,431

Voters: Around 95.6 lakh

Uncontested victories (by Trinamul): Budge Budge, Sainthia, Dinhata and Suri

Police deployment (likely): Around 44,000. All polling premises will have one to four armed police personnel.

Observers: 108 WBCS officers as observers for each civic body, 20 IAS officers as observers for each of the districts going to polls, 11 other senior IAS officers as special observers

District with the most poll-bound centres: North 24-Parganas, with 25 (comprising 4,107 booths) of its 27 municipalities headed for polls

District with the least poll-bound centres: Darjeeling, with one (comprising 82 booths) of its three municipalities headed for polls

North-south divide: 19 municipalities from north, 89 of south

Last elections: Of these 108, two are newly created, 91 had gone to polls in 2015 and the rest had gone to polls between 2013 and 2017

Past results: Of the 106 municipalities, Trinamul won 86, the Left 10, the Congress nine and Gorkha Janmukti Morcha one. The BJP won none

(Not considering changes through defection)

Key issues now: Bucking the usual trend of micro, local issues, civic elections this time are part of the wider, ongoing statewide contest of Trinamul to further strengthen its grip over the state, trying to deny the BJP victories in any of the 65 civic bodies it had led in the Assembly elections The Left is looking to unseat the BJP from the second place in terms of vote share

Notable contests: For the BJP’s three most prominent leaders in the state, it’s a fight for prestige on home turf, with leader of the Opposition in the Bengal Assembly Suvendu Adhikari giving it his all in Contai, BJP national vice-president Dilip Ghosh in Kharagpur and the party’s state unit chief Sukanta Majumdar in Balurghat.

In north Bengal, Trinamul veteran and former minister Rabindranath Ghosh who lost in the Assembly election is looking for a comeback by winning Cooch Behar. His party is keen to win the newly created bodies of Falakata and Moynaguri. Political fragmentation in the historic Darjeeling municipality has made the outcome uncertain

In the major urban clusters of the south, Trinamul is looking to capitalise on its stunning advances in Calcutta and its immediate neighbourhood since last year by hoping to win all 54 municipalities going to polls in North and South 24-Parganas, Howrah, Hooghly and Nadia.

Most likely outcome: Multiple political scientists agreed on the likelihood of a near-total sweep by Trinamul. The BJP would consider itself fortunate if it manages to win even five of the 65 bodies it led in less than a year ago. The Left might find green shoots in the form of second place — at the cost of the BJP — in many places.