By IANS,
Kolkata : Continuing their electoral success, West Bengal’s opposition parties Trinamool Congress and Congress Wednesday crushed the ruling Left Front (LF) in the urban civic body polls, winning 10 of 16 municipalities and leading in one.
Six weeks after they suffered a debacle in the Lok Sabha polls, the LF continued to lose ground, particularly in south Bengal, as urban voters reposed their faith in the opposition.
Out of the 16 municipalities that went to the hustings Sunday, the opposition had won 10 while the LF triumphed in only three. Of the remaining three civic bodies, the Trinamool Congress-Congress combine was leading in one, while no decisive trend was yet available from two municipalities.
The Trinamool Congress bagged four municipalities while the Congress won three. The Trinamool-Congress alliance won a majority in three other civic bodies.
Till now, the LF had controlled 11 of the 16 municipalities in the 10 districts.
The opposition snatched six civic bodies in the south Bengal districts of North 24 Parganas, South 24 Parganas and Howrah, in a virtual replay of the parliamentary elections, with their votes increasing in several wards.
The LF, however, managed to retain the Rajarhat-Gopalpur municipality in North 24 Parganas, the combine’s sole success in south Bengal.
In the northern part of the state, the Mal municipality of Jalpaiguri district provided the only silver lining for the beleaguered LF, which snatched the civic body from the Congress.
In the April-May Lok Sabha elections, the Congress-Trinamool-Socialist Unity Centre of India (SUCI) alliance bagged 26 of the state’s 42 seats, while the Left Front got only 15.