West Bengal's leftists have regained control of the Kolkata civic body after five years; but their lacklustre victory allows the opposition Trinamool Congress to just about stay afloat as a political force ahead of next year's assembly elections.

Leftists had predicted a sweeping victory in polls to the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, which was held by the Trinamool since 2000.

Pre-poll surveys showed that people were frustrated with bickering within the opposition parties.

The Left Front just scraped through to an absolute majority of 75 seats in the 141-seat KMC.

• Trinamool suffers split

The Trinamool and its allies and the Congress and its partners garnered 64 seats, with the former group winning 45 seats.

However, Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress has something to cheer about. Trinamool Congress can take solace from the fact that it secured only one seat in the capital city in the last parliamentary elections.

None in the opposition camp believed a Left comeback could be prevented.

• KMC poll crucial for Trinamool

The encouraging performance could spur party workers to work for a better showing in next year's assembly elections.

The going couldn't have been worse for the Trinamool after its decimation in the 2001 assembly election and total rout in the 2004 parliament polls.

Kolkata civic debacle was waiting to happen, but the thud wasn't as loud as the leftists would have liked it to be.

Also, Trinamool won the Uttarpara Kotrang municipality, adjacent to Kolkata.

Trinamool party workers in the countryside would be looking up to these polls for inspiration.