Gautam Deb shows the victory sign outside the counting centre at Dhupguri High School on Tuesday. Picture by Biplab Basak

Jalpaiguri, June 5: Trinamul is set to form the first local self-government in north Bengal on its own with its Dhupguri victory.

Till date, the Trinamul Congress had never been in power by itself in either the municipalities or the zilla parishads across north Bengal. But this has changed with the party wresting the Dhupguri municipality in Jalpaiguri from the CPM that had controlled it for 10 years.

Trinamul’s inroads in the region began in 2009 when Khageswar Roy won the Assembly by-election from Jalpaiguri’s Rajgunj, making him the sole party MLA in north Bengal.

The anti-Left wave that swept across the south during the Assembly elections last year was also evident in the north, with the party winning 16 of the 54 seats in the six north Bengal districts.

At that time, Trinamul had led in eight wards of Dhupguri. In the civic polls, the party won from all of them and wrested three more wards from the CPM, taking its tally to 11 in the 16-member municipality.

Trinamul supporters bathed in green gulal celebrate the victory in Dhupguri on Tuesday. (Biplab Basak)

North Bengal development minister Gautam Deb had been camping in Dhupguri for the past few weeks, making the polls a “prestige fight” by capitalising on the “pro-change” mood of the electorate.

Deb had been staying in forest and PWD bungalows to carry out the election campaigns. “He used to leave his Siliguri home at 7am and stay in Dhupguri till almost 9pm. Being the chairperson of the Trinamul Congress north Bengal core committee, he had gone all out to wrest the municipality from the CPM that has been in power ever since it was formed in 2002,” said one of Deb’s close aides.

Trinamul’s campaign plank was that the CPM had been neglecting Dhupguri since the time it became an urban centre. “More than 50 per cent of the town does not have proper roads, drainage and water supply. The Trinamul campaign was that if the CPM was voted back to power, Dhupguri would remain in its present state. It was better to vote for the party in power in the state to usher in growth. That was Deb’s campaign plank,” the aide said.

Deb gave the credit for the Dhupguri win to “development oriented stand” of Mamata Banerjee. “That the CPM had done nothing for the development of the Dhupguri municipality in the past 10 years is evident from the result. We will work for the betterment of civic amenities and for the development of the town,” the minister said today.

For the CPM, the blow comes a few months after its candidate Mamata Roy wrested the Dhupguri Assembly seat from Trinamul’s Mina Burman. Roy had been a contestant in the civic polls too, in ward 7.

“We are analysing the reasons for our defeat. In the 2011 Assembly polls, our candidates had polled 43 per cent votes in the 16 wards. In the 2007 civic election, the percentage was 53. We are yet to calculate the percentage of votes in this election. However, we are accepting the people’s verdict with all humility,” said the CPM zonal committee secretary, Tushar Basu.

The Dhupguri block Congress president, Ajoy Pal, admitted that his party had fared badly as there was no poll alliance with Trinamul. The Congress has lost the only seat it had this time. “Our supporters voted for Trinamul candidates,” he said.