West Bengal Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee has been successful in convincing the BJP and Congress candidates to join her, leaving no room for opposition, this is an almost next to impossible achievement.
BJP‘s West Bengal Unit President, Dilip Ghosh states that, Trinamool has gone to all limits to lure the opposition Councillors, in the just concluded local body elections, to join their party. Trinamool’s mission is to make Bengal opposition free. To support his statement Dilip presented the data of the latest round of municipal elections in the state. On May 20, Rumpa Ghorui, a dalit woman and the winning candidate of BJP in Pujali municipality in South 24 Parganas, joined the Trinamool. On May 21, Chinmay Barui, another BJP Councillor, joined Trinamool, totally ruling out BJP from 16 ward Pujali Municipality, where it had just won two seats. Similarly, the two winning candidates of the CPM in the 21-ward-Domkol Municipality in Murshidabad, joined Trinamool only hours after the results were out.
Mamata Banerjee’s party had won four of the seven municipalities that had gone to poll, out of which three of them are located at the plains and one is on the hills. Of the total 64 seats of the three municipalities located at the plain, Raiganj, Domkol and Pujali, Trinamool won 56 seats and 8 went to the opposition. Out of these 8 seats, Trinamool already lured 4 seats to its party, while the remaining 4 are also on the verge of joining Trinamool.
Pradesh Congress Chief, Adhir Chowdhury, put allegations on Banerjee’s party saying that, Trinamool now could not even bear the existence of any opposition. The opposition winning Councillors were lured by giving them free homes under the PM Awas Yojna and quotas of 10 jobs. He further added that, the opposition parties were not allowed to contest election and if they did and won, the winning candidates were forced to switch to Trinamool. Denying all these allegations, Secretary General of Trinamool, Partha Chatterjee, said that, nobody was forced to join Trinamool, they joined the party for the sake of development.