People's Democracy

LF Wins The Bulk Of Seats In Panchayat Polls

B Prasant

WITH the results of the district-level Zilla Parishads in at the time of writing this, it is clear that the Left Front is once again set to sweep the rural polls.  Responding to the campaign of hate and violence carried out with impunity by the opposition, the people of the villages have given an emphatic verdict in favour of the Left Front.

On his return from Delhi where he met the union home minister, L K Advani, Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said that the Left Front sweep at the Panchayat polls was a fitting reply of the rural masses to the mayhem and murder carried out by the opposition.  In the days ahead, commented Bhattacharjee, the rural bodies would work hard towards further development of the villages in a coordinated and decentralised manner, remaining deep amidst the people.

In the meanwhile, the Zilla Parishad results once more stress the comprehensive manner in which the CPI(M) and the Left Front have registered wins in the districts. The Left Front has done particularly well in Howrah, Hooghly, Nadia, Coochbehar, the two 24 Parganas, north and south, and the two Midnapores, east and west.  These are the districts, where the opposition had run riot in the run up to the polls.

Of the opposition, the Trinamul Congress-BJP alliance has done very badly indeed.  Trinamul Congress could win but 15 seats while it had won 38 back in 1998.  The BJP could not improve over the sole seat it had won during the fifth Panchayat polls. On the other hand, Pradesh Congress has improved its position winning 66 seats as against 32 it had won in 1998.  It has also won the Murshidabad Zilla Parishad. 

The Maldah Zilla Parishad is headed for a hung affair with none of the major political parties and alliances gaining the requisite majority to form the Parishad board, and the Pradesh Congress needs to tie up with either the Trinamul Congress or the BJP.

The Left Front, as in 1998, has won the overwhelming bulk of the Panchayat Samity and Gram Panchayat seats. It is noticed that even in districts where the Left Front has not done too well in the Zilla Parishads, it has nonetheless continued to make impressive gains at the Gram Panchayat and Panchayat Samity levels, doing even better than it had in 1998. The CPI (M) is the largest possible gainer in terns of votes polled at all three levels.