The ruling Trinamool Congress looks set for a resounding victory in rural Bengal after nearly eight hours of counting of votes in the three-tier state Panchayat elections, with control over 80 per cent of the Gram Panchayat seats. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has emerged a distant second in almost all the districts. According to the latest trend, Trinamool won in 20 out of 825 Zilla Parishad seats and was comfortably leading in another 22, while the opposition parties drew a blank. The state ruling party also came out victorious in at least 160 out of 6,125 Panchayat Samiti seats and were