National

Left Front wins most panchayats

KOLKATA: The Left Front won a majority of the panchayat samitis and gram panchayats in most of the districts of West Bengal though the Trinamool Congress was successful in making dents in the Left support base, putting up a good showing particularly in five districts in south Bengal.

The three-tier panchayat elections were held in 17 districts in the State on May 11, 14 and 18.

After wresting control of the zilla parishads in South 24 Parganas and Purbo Medinipur districts, the Trinamool Congress and its allies made fresh political inroads into North 24 Parganas, Nadia and Howrah by adding a majority of the panchayat samitis in these districts to its overall tally.

The Congress won a majority of panchayat samitis in North Dinajpur district. It had won the zilla parishads there and in Malda district. The panchayat samiti results in Malda showed a tie between the Congress and the Left Front.

The Left Front won most of the panchayat samitis in the other ten districts that had gone to the polls. It registered resounding victories in a large swathe of north Bengal and certain districts in south Bengal including Burdwan, Purulia, Paschim Medinipur, Hooghly districts, considered its bastions.

Biman Bose, chairman of the Left front Committee, said that the results would be reviewed at subsequent meetings between leaders of the different constituents of the Left Front. Whether or not the erstwhile rural bodies had been able to serve the people as was expected of them would be looked into, he added.

The responsibility of the Left Front to convince the people of the need for greater industrialisation that might, at places, necessitate the acquisition of farmland, had increased, given the poll results, Mr. Bose, who is also the secretary of the State Committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), said.

The Trinamool Congress chief, Mamata Banerjee, said that “the winds of change have started blowing” in West Bengal. It would take the Trinamool Congress and its allies “another two years to topple the Left Front government,” she predicted.

On the question of the future of a joint fight by the Opposition forces against the Left Front, the Union Information and Broadcasting Minister, Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi, said that the seeds had been sown and “perhaps we will be able to reap the harvest.”

Mr. Dasmunsi, who is also president of the West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee, said the verdict of the electorate was against the politics of violence being perpetrated by the CPI(M) and its “anti-democratic, anti-human policies and its oppression of peasants.”

Calling for self-introspection, Kshiti Goswami, senior leader of the Revolutionary Socialist Party, and the State’s Minister for Public Works Department, said the CPI(M) had declined to pay much importance to recommendations made by its allies in the Left Front.

The Left Front had to pay for its policy of land acquisition for industries and the results were a reflection of the pressure tactics employed on the peasants to get them to part with their land, he said.

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