The Trinamul leadership in Cooch Behar on Wednesday ensured a peaceful submission of people's recommendations for candidates for the panchayat polls, belying fears within the party about a rerun of Tuesday's infighting among grassroots leaders in rival camps of the party.
Despite Tuesday's shaky start to Abhishek Banerjee's two-month Sanjog Yatra, where ballot boxes and ballot papers were torn and tossed in the air by supporters of certain factions, the party’s all-India general secretary was firm in continuing with the "voting" drive to get recommendations of panchayat poll candidates from the people.
Abhishek announced on Tuesday that the same process of getting people's recommendations directly through ballot would be repeated in various venues on Wednesday.
Accordingly, since Wednesday morning, senior Trinamul leaders reached places like Gosanimari and Sahebganj to conduct the process. They were accompanied by policemen who remained present at the venues throughout the day to ensure that the process ended peacefully.
“Whatever happened yesterday (Tuesday) was unacceptable. On Wednesday, however, there was no such problem and the exercise was carried out at least five venues in a peaceful manner,” said Girindranath Barman, the chairman of Trinamul in Cooch Behar district.
The selection process named “Gram Banglar Motamot” (opinion of rural Bengal) was planned by Trinamul to select candidates for the panchayat elections by collecting recommendations from people.
No spat was reported anywhere during the exercise on Wednesday, much to the relief of the party. But questions of whether the process irked some grassroots leaders remained.
“Yesterday (Tuesday), 32 office bearers of Dhalpal, a locality under Tufanganj Assembly seat, resigned from their posts. They alleged that the list of candidates which they had prepared was ignored. We believe the party will mull such decisions,” said a party functionary.
He pointed out there were a huge number of seats in the gram panchayat polls and the aspirations of various lobbies of Trinamul supporters to field their favoured candidates would have to be considered during the exercise.
Abhishek, however, was unperturbed.
Abhishek Banerjee exchanges greetings with people on the second day of the outreach in Cooch Behar on Wednesday Main Uddin Chisti
“Let us be clear that candidates will be selected only through this process and not through the recommendations of leaders. We will field only those whom people want,” he said at a public meeting.
The Trinamul MP again slammed the MLAs of the saffron camp who were elected from Cooch Behar district, alleging that they didn't work for the people.
“The BJP MLAs of Cooch Behar have done nothing productive at the Assembly. Donning saffron, they get in and walk out within a minute, shouting slogans. These MLAs do not work for people and they should be kept confined to their houses,” said Abhishek.
Nikhil Ranjan Dey, the BJP MLA of Cooch Behar South seat, reacted sharply to Abhishek's remarks.
“Elected representatives of Trinamul in rural bodies have indulged in corruption and Trinamul is desperately trying to revive its support base. We have always been vocal on peoples’ issues and such plans to launch protests against us will not work,” he said.
On Wednesday, Abhishek also attended three public meetings and interacted with people. On Thursday, he will leave for Alipurduar district to continue the outreach, party sources said.
