Calcutta, July 5: The voting pattern in the Calcutta Municipal Corporation’s mayoral election today signalled a rare unity among the Opposition parties and their support to Mamata Banerjee who might now feel encouraged to float the concept of “mahajot of anti-CPM forces” before next year’s Assembly polls.

Trinamul Congress candidate for mayor’s post, Javed Khan, bagged all the 65 votes of the Opposition councillors against CPM’s Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya who polled 75.

Today’s election to the mayor’s post was held in the presence of 140 councillors, with former mayor Subrata Mukherjee conspicuous by his absence. Mukherjee broke away from Trinamul to float the Paschimbanga Unnayan Congress Mancha just before the civic polls on the plea of uniting anti-CPM forces.

There was, however, minor hiccups in the Opposition this morning when cross-voting took place during election to the chairman’s post.

Amid cheers from Left Front councillors, CPM’s Nirmal Mukherjee was elected chairman bagging 77 votes against Trinamul’s chairperson nominee Sukla Bhar. With Ajit Panja not being able to vote for the chairman’s post, Bhar was supposed to bag 64 but she got 62. This means that two votes from the Opposition had gone in favour of Nirmal Mukherjee.

Reacting to the cross voting, Trinamul leaders said Manch councillors must have cross-voted in favour of the CPM nominee. Manch leaders, however, denied it.

The Trinamul leadership attached importance to “the unity” among Opposition councillors over the mayoral election and said this would pave the way for “realignment of anti-CPM forces” in the coming days.

“The outcome of the election has conclusively proved that Trinamul Congress is the principal Opposition party in the state. We are ready to welcome all the real anti-CPM forces to our fold and intend to build a broad-based platform to fight the Marxists in next year’s Assembly polls,” said party chief Mamata Banerjee.

Observers said Mamata, despite knowing that she has only 45 councillors from the Trinamul-BJP combine, had fielded Khan for the post of mayor in order to test councillors from the combined Opposition.

“That way, she has been successful and has proved her ability to keep all anti-CPM forces together against the Left Front,” said an analyst.