TMC and Asok trade barbs on result

TT, Siliguri, May 18: Trinamul councillors at Siliguri Municipal Corporation and mayor Asok Bhattacharya traded verbal volleys a day before the Assembly poll results.

While the Trinamul leaders claimed Bhattacharya, who is contesting the Siliguri Assembly seat, would lose and demanded that he step down from the mayor's post, the mayor replied that the Trinamul councillors should resign instead as the party would not come to power in the state.

"The mayor has miserably failed to run the civic body in the past one year and could not provide even the bare minimum civic services to the residents on a regular basis. Yet, he contested the Assembly polls from the Siliguri seat. We feel he will lose the polls this time and should resign from the mayor's post immediately," Nantu Paul, the leader of opposition at the SMC, said today.

"After assuming the mayor's chair, he had promised to resolve problems like reducing pollution at the dumping ground, provide uninterrupted drinking water, and ensure better traffic management and proper conservancy services. But he failed in addressing even one of these issues and instead, the civic services became worse," Paul said.

Such assertions from the leader of Opposition came a day after the mayor trumpeted his success in the past one year. Today, Bhattacharya completed his first year as mayor.

The attack by Trinamul, and that too a day ahead of the poll results, also made the mayor react.

Bhattacharya said the Trinamul councillors should resign from their posts and claimed that the Left-Congress alliance would come to power in the state.

"I would say that they (Trinamul councillors) should resign from their posts as Trinamul would be ousted from power tomorrow and we will form the government. I don't know why they are making such irrelevant comments. I am equally confident of winning the Siliguri seat," he said.

Such remarks by Trinamul councillors, political observers said, hint that if Trinamul comes to power in the state again, it is unlikely that the party and the state government will soften their stance at the SMC that is run by a Left board under Bhattacharya.

"Trinamul had to face back-to-back defeats in the SMC and Siliguri Mahakuma Parishad elections last year. It was Bhattacharya, who worked out the Siliguri model and informally allied with the Congress," an observer said. "This has kept Trinamul at bay. If Trinamul comes to power again, it is unlikely that the mayor and his civic board will get full-fledged cooperation from the state as he had solicited yesterday through the media."

"In fact, there are chances that Trinamul might devise some strategy to dethrone the LF led boards, both in the SMC and the SMP," the observer added.