TIL Desk/National/Kolkata/ West Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress gained control of the 144-member Kolkata Municipal Corporation on Tuesday clinching nearly 72 per cent of votes, in a ringing endorsement for the party seven months after its landslide win in the state assembly polls.
Mamata Banerjee’s party won 134 seats to post a hat-trick of wins, decimating a frail challenge from the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, the Left Front and the Congress, officials said. The BJP, which lost much of its steam after the assembly poll defeat, managed to win just three wards, a senior State Election Commission official said.
The Congress and the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front bagged two wards each, and Independents three. The Left Front, despite the mauling, finished second to the TMC in terms of vote share. Chief Minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee, who has been trying to expand her party’s footprint beyond her native state, saw in the victory a leg-up for her national ambitions.
“I want to dedicate this triumph to the people of the state and ‘Maa, Mati, Manush’ (mother, land and people – TMC slogan for many years). Several national parties like the BJP, the Congress, and the CPI-M fought against us, but they were all defeated. This is a victory of a daughter of the soil. This victory will show the way in national politics in days to come,” a visibly pleased Banerjee told reporters outside her residence.
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