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| Gautam Deb, Shankar Malakar |
Siliguri, April 18: Darjeeling district president Shankar Malakar today accused Trinamul of using force to make its presence felt in the district’s rural belt ahead of next year’s panchayat polls, an allegation that has been met with a volley of protests and allegations from minister Gautam Deb.
Trinamul said Malakar’s outburst was prompted by the party’s “insecurity” about its support base in north Bengal — adding one more dimension to the uneasy, and often bitter, relation between the two parties. The rift had started over the sharing of the posts of the mayor and the chairperson, soon after the two parties won the Siliguri Municipal Corporation election in 2009.
In recent times, the relation between the allies have dipped all the more because of clashes between the student wings of the two outfits and the arrest of a Chhatra Parishad leader.
“Trinamul, which has a limited base in Siliguri town, is now forcibly trying to penetrate into the rural areas of Siliguri sub-division. A section of workers and leaders, who were with the CPM and have now joined Trinamul, is intimidating people, grabbing government land and trying to create tension in areas as a desperate move to garner support,” Malakar said today. “It seems to be a planned strategy to gain control in rural areas before the panchayat polls. However, we will not relent and continue our struggle with workers and supporters who have been with the Congress for decades.”
In Darjeeling district, of the three plains MLAs, two are from the Congress. The third is Trinamul’s Rudranath Bhattacharya, who represents Siliguri. Both Phansidewa and Matigara-Naxalbari, represented by Sunil Tirkey and Malakar in the Assembly, are in the rural belt.
The district Congress president said north Bengal development minister Deb, a Trinamul MLA from Jalpaiguri district, was keeping him in the dark about the development projects in the region. “It seems to be a politically-motivated move to keep us in the dark and announce projects like fire brigade and a disaster management training centre in Naxalbari without our knowledge. Although I am the local MLA, I am never consulted,” Malakar said.
The Congress has lined up a series of programmes starting from April 20 across Siliguri to mobilise support before the panchayat polls. In the seven-seat Siliguri Mahakuma Parishad, equivalent to the zilla parishad, three belong to the Congress and the rest are from the CPM. Of the four panchayat samitis, two are under the Congress and the rest with the CPM. The Congress is also in power in 12 of the 22 gram panchayats.
“It is clear that the influence of Trinamul is confined to some pockets of the Siliguri town only. We don’t know if there will be any alliance. But we can hold on our own. We will organise meetings, rallies and other events from April 20 to May 17. State level leaders will visit the region to interact with the workers. Even today, we are the only and principal opposition of the Left Front in rural areas,” said Malakar.
Responding to the charges, Deb, who is the president of the Darjeeling district Trinamul, said it would be difficult for the Congress to retain its support.
“More and more people, from youths to elderly residents and women, are joining our party from the rural areas of Siliguri sub-division. This happened because of our performance and the fulfilment of commitments made by the chief minister,” he said.
“The Congress, whose representatives have failed to fulfil even the basic needs of people in the past 10 months after being elected, is suffering from the insecurity of losing support. So the party is levelling such baseless charges against us. The common people will understand that these leaders are trying to hide their failure,” Deb added.
Like the Congress, Mamata Banerjee’s party will also line up programmes in rural areas of Siliguri, the minister said.(TT)
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