TMC ticket carrot before bypoll

TT, Cooch Behar, Oct. 27: Trinamul has sent a message to its booth-level leaders stating that their performance in the Cooch Behar Lok Sabha bypoll will be linked to allocation of tickets for the next panchayat elections.

Today, the party held a worker's convention at Rabindra Bhavan here.

"Leaders of the panchayats where our candidates will not do well will not be given tickets to contest the (next) panchayat elections. If the (bypoll) results are not satisfactory in a particular panchayat, members of that area would not be re-nominated for the next (rural) elections," said Abdul Jalil Ahmed, Trinamul's district vice-president, who attended the session.

"Those who will perform well will have good chances of contesting again. We have told our panchayat members to work as hard as they did while fighting their own elections," he added.

Sources said although Trinamul was certain of winning the bypoll this time, the party was wary of the BJP's Hemchandra Barman, who came third in the 2014 elections and bagged over two lakh votes from the seat. In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, Trinamul's Renuka Sinha had won the seat by a margin of over 87,000 votes defeating Dipak Roy of the Forward Bloc.

The bypoll on November 19 is being held as Sinha passed away recently.

Today, state Trinamul secretary and Dinhata MLA, Udayan Guha, said: "In the by-election, we intend to increase our winning margin by double and that is why we are aiming to increase our tally in each booth."

The workers' convention was chaired by party MP and president, Subrata Bakshi. "With each passing year, Mamata Banerjee's support base is increasing. The entire nation is watching the bypoll. Our aim is the general elections in 2019, which we are definitely going to do well," Bakshi said.

Rabindranath Ghosh, the district president of Trinamul, who was also present at the meeting, said there was no inner-party rivalry at any level.

"There are no differences between our leadership. We have sent out the message (related to performance) not only to the booth-level leaders but also to the block leadership as well as panchayat samity and zilla parishad members. The performance of each and every leader will be monitored in the byelection," he said.

Party insiders laid stress on performance.

"In the last Assembly polls, our candidate from Cooch Behar (South), Mihir Goswami, trailed in many wards in the Cooch Behar municipality area. There was also dissent after Udayan Guha was inducted (Guha switched from Bloc last year)," said a source.

"After the Assembly polls open dissent ended as there was a strong message from the top leadership. The political future of Trinamul leaders at all levels would be at stake if they didn't work earnestly."