Trinamul on Wednesday swept Sunday’s polls, winning 102 of the 108 municipalities after having bagged five municipal corporations in the winter, tightening its grip over urban centres where the BJP was deemed a force to reckon with as recently as last summer.

Four civic bodies remained hung while non-Trinamul parties won two — the Left picking up Taherpur (Nadia) and the newly formed Hamro Party pocketing Darjeeling.

Chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who left to campaign for the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh in the afternoon, swatted away Opposition allegations of foul play and the charges of vitiation of the poll atmosphere by sections of the mainstream media.

“Kothao kichhu ghateni (Nothing happened anywhere),” Mamata said at Calcutta airport, responding to questions about the 1,000-plus allegations of malpractice by the Opposition.

Trinamul has won over 86 per cent of the wards (1,870 of 2,171), after winning more than 89 per cent (332 of 371) in the five civic corporations that voted in the winter.

Trinamul’s vote share is 63.5 per cent, far higher than the 48 per cent it logged in last summer’s Assembly elections. The BJP’s vote share has tumbled to 12.6 per cent — behind the Left — from around 38 per cent in the Assembly elections.

The long overdue civic polls witnessed an average turnout of over 78 per cent and no reports of major violence, critical injury or death. The BJP had urged governor Jagdeep Dhankhar to ensure the cancellation of all the elections, followed by re-polling under the supervision of central forces.

“A section of the media, you spread a lot of canards. Let me give you a fact. Voting took place in 11,025 booths, out of which you showed seven-eight booths where there was gandogol (trouble),” Mamata said.

“I humbly thank the people. The huge victories everywhere further inspire us to work for the people…. The more we win, the more namro (humble), shanto (calm), snigdho (soft), well-behaved we should become…. (This is) My appeal to my colleagues.”

Some of the striking features of the results:

Trinamul rise: Sunday’s results mark a regaining of ground that Trinamul had lost to the BJP since 2019, with recovery or progress in the western districts and north Bengal where the saffron camp had put up a strong showing amid Mamata’s sweep of the Assembly elections last summer.

In 33 Bengal municipalities currently, including 10 in North 24-Parganas, not a single ward has a non-Trinamul representative.

BJP fall: The BJP, which led from 65 of these 108 civic bodies during last year’s Assembly elections, has failed to win any of them. Its tally of 63 wards marks an abysmal 2.9 per cent of those that went to the polls, barely ahead of the Congress’s 59 and the Left’s 56. In 2015, before its meteoric rise (and eventual fall) in the state, the BJP had won 138 wards.

Even several BJP MLAs lost. Key leaders such as Suvendu Adhikari, Sukanta Majumdar, Dilip Ghosh and Arjun Singh failed to secure wins for the BJP on their home turfs.

Left hope: The Left has more than doubled its vote share, from less than 6 per cent in the Assembly elections to around 14.2 per cent. Not only has it won 56 wards but also a civic body in south Bengal.

The results have kept alive the trend of the Left doing better than the BJP in many places in Bengal, as seen during several Assembly by-elections last year and the winter civic polls.

A portion of the anti-Trinamul vote has clearly made its way back to the Left from the BJP.

The Left, which contested these elections alone, has apparently gained from the work its student and youth wing activists have done on the ground — especially in urban centres — since the outbreak of Covid-19.

Independents key: Independents have won a startling 119 wards, nearly double the BJP’s figure and more than twice the Left and Congress tallies. They have bagged 4.9 per cent of the vote share, higher than the Congress’s.

Independents — mostly rebels expelled by Trinamul for refusing to stand down in favour of the official nominees — have played a key role in four civic bodies (Jhalda, Beldanga, Champdani and Egra) getting hung.

Most of these rebels have begun efforts towards re-acceptance by Trinamul. A solution could help Trinamul raise its tally to 106 among the 108 civic bodies.

Opposition backfire: Instead of focusing on local or neighbourhood-specific issues, the Opposition — especially the BJP and the Left — had kept targeting Mamata and her party over wider political planks. This may have gone in favour of Trinamul, which last summer won a historic, state-wide mandate over countless such issues.

Besides, till the end, the BJP had appeared focused on inventing excuses for an anticipated defeat and seeking favourable verdicts from the judiciary to stall the election process, rather than working on the ground to try and win a few civic bodies.