TMC leads in nominations for WB Panchayat elections, BJP close behind on last day

Today marks the last day for filing nominations for the upcoming Panchayat elections in West Bengal, scheduled for July 8. As per the list submitted until Wednesday night, the ruling party Trinamool Congress has filed the highest number of candidates, closely followed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) stands in third place, while the Congress party is positioned last. A total of 162,655 nominations have been submitted thus far.

The nomination process has been underway since last Friday, and according to the State Election Commission's assessment, the ruling Trinamool Congress has maintained a significant lead in nominations over the past five days.

The data for the initial five days reveals that Trinamool Congress has surpassed the BJP by 3,183 nominations across all three levels of Panchayats (Gram Panchayat, Panchayat Samiti, and Zilla Parishad). Specifically, the ruling party has filed 49,491 nominations, while the BJP has submitted a total of 46,308 nominations by the fifth day. The CPI(M) holds the third position, having filed 38,039 nominations during these five days, while the Congress party trails with only 11,823 nominations.

However, on Wednesday, Trinamool Congress filed a total of 418 nominations for Zilla Parishad seats, falling behind both the BJP (759) and CPI(M) (727). For Panchayat Samiti seats, the BJP leads with 6,786 nominations, surpassing the ruling party's 6,058 nominations. Nevertheless, Trinamool Congress has secured a dominant position in the Gram Panchayat category with a total of 43,015 nominations.

In the first four days of the nomination process, Trinamool Congress was ranked third (9,328), while the CPI(M) (30,249) and the BJP (37,565) took the lead.

Notably, West Bengal has a total of 3,317 Gram Panchayats, 341 Panchayat Samitis, and 20 Zilla Parishads. The overall number of eligible voters stands at 56,721,234.