Sept. 24: Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamul Congress today swept eight of the 12 municipalities that voted in last week’s civic polls, keeping intact its electoral momentum, escalating the Left’s crisis and countering suggestions that it has alienated non-rural voters.

Most of the areas that voted are semi-urban and some municipalities, such as Panihati and Burdwan town, have significant urban pockets.

The Left drew a blank in former strongholds Burdwan and Chakdah (Nadia), where it had withdrawn from the race an hour after the voting had started on Saturday, alleging rigging by Trinamul supporters. Out of the dozen municipalities, the Left could retain only one of the five it held in 2008.

The Congress retained two of the three municipalities it won five years ago. The third threw up a hung verdict.

Trinamul not only retained the three municipalities (Diamond Harbour, Habra and Guskara) it had won in 2008 but added five more — Burdwan, Chakdah, Balurghat, Panihati and Dubrajpur — to its tally.

When Trinamul tightened its hold on panchayats after the July rural polls, its populist policies were given credit and it was assumed that the popularity might have ebbed in semi-urban and urban areas because of the stand on industrialisation and some controversial statements attributed to the chief minister.

However, since the panchayat polls, the chief minister has been focusing on industry and has steered clear of controversy. A show of defiance by three MPs — one of them citing the Saradha collapse — flared on the eve of the municipal elections but that does not seem to have impacted the results in any way.

Building upon its success in the panchayat polls, Trinamul has expanded its sway in south Bengal and scored significant gains in the north at the cost of the Congress.

In north Bengal, Trinamul won the Balurghat municipality in South Dinajpur and bagged several wards across Cooch Behar, Jalpaiguri and North Dinajpur — a performance that stood out against the tally of a lone ward in 2008 in the region.

“Today’s results conclusively prove that Trinamul is establishing its presence in north Bengal convincingly,” north Bengal development minister Gautam Deb said.

The south offered little solace for the battered Left. Trinamul won all the seats in the 35-ward Burdwan municipality and the 21-ward Chakdah civic body. In the 2008 polls, the Left had won 30 of the 35 seats in Burdwan and 20 of the 21 wards in Chakdah.

The Trinamul juggernaut also touched Birbhum’s Dubrajpur, where the party bagged the municipality by winning nine of the 16 seats.

In Panihati, the results dealt a blow to the CPM in North 24-Parganas where the leadership had been looking forward to “better prospects”. The Left ended up with just two of the 35 seats.