State Congress chief and MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury has sought the intervention of Bengal governor C.V. Ananda Bose in the ongoing Jhalda civic body controversy.

The state government on Friday decided to appoint a Trinamul Congress councilor, Joba Machuar, as the administrator of Jhalda municipality, even as the majority in the 12-member civic body elected an Independent candidate, Sheela Chatterjee, to helm it on Saturday.

“I am constrained to seek your intervention as a constitutional head with regard to tyranny of state instrumentalities,” the Congress veteran wrote in his strongly worded letter to governor Bose.

In the last few days, the civic body in Jhalda has been witness to an unprecedented situation in Bengal.

According to an order issued by the state government, Machuar will be the administrator till a new municipal chief is appointed in Jhalda.

The Jhalda municipality had to elect a new chairperson on Saturday after Suresh Agarwal and Sudip Karmakar resigned as the chairman and deputy chairman, respectively, following their defeat in the no-confidence motion brought by five Congress and two Independent councilors together on November 21.

On Saturday, a meeting was convened between the Congress councillors and the Independents to elect a chairperson.

The meeting elected Independent councilor Chatterjee as the chairperson.

“...we came to know that an administrator instead of an elected Chairman of the said Municipality appointed be breaching blatantly all the laid-out norms and modalities let alone statutory provisions of Municipality acts,” Chowdhury wrote to the governor.

Chowdhury claimed this incident was an example of how the state government was throttling the democratic rights of elected institutions.

“I thought it prudent to flag your attention and seek your intervention into this morass of Political dirty game and retrieve the ethos of democracy,” Chowdhury added in his letter to the governor.

The Congress has decided to move Calcutta High Court on Monday to seek the dismissal of Machuar as the administrator of Jhalda municipality.