Trinamool Congress set to sweep rural polls

The Trinamool Congress today appeared set to sweep the crucial panchayat poll in West Bengal with a huge margin in most of the districts, taking a comfortable lead in gram panchayat in 12 of 17 districts.
The initial gram panchayat results showed that the TMC had swept 10 out of 11 south Bengal districts and two north Bengal districts, demonstrating that the two and a half years of incumbency and controversies, including the Saradha chit fund scam, had by and large failed to sway the rural people's faith on the Mamata Banerjee government.
The TMC maintained its lead in 10 out of 11 districts in south Bengal (except Murshidabad) and also showed strong performance in Cooch Bihar and South Dinajpur districts in north Bengal in terms of the number of gram panchayat seats won.

The party was also ahead in the panchayat samities in several of the 17 districts.
In the panchayat samity, TMC was decisively ahead in the erstwhile Left citadel of Burdwan district winning so far 4 of the 31 samities while the Left Front settled for one.
The party has so far bagged three out of the 29 panchayat samities in West Midnapore district and was leading in eight others. The opposition parties have drawn a blank so far.
In Hooghly district, the TMC was leading in five panchayat samities out of 18.
In Birbhum, the TMC was ahed in 11 out of 19 panchayat samities while the Left was ahead in three. Congress has drawn a blank so far.