Trinamul on Friday finalised its list for 144 candidates for as many wards of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation over a 155-minute meeting at Mamata Banerjee’s residence, retaining 87 of its 126 outgoing councillors, including outgoing mayor Firhad Hakim and deputy Mayor Atin Ghosh.
In near-total defiance of speculation rife over the past few weeks, the list bore a firm imprint of the chief minister’s intervention and the intent to largely rely on time-tested loyalists who delivered as councillors, rather than on surveys and reports in favour of the new and the young attributed to poll strategist Prashant Kishor and Trinamul’s Number Two Abhishek Banerjee.
“I am a mere member of our party’s loyal infantry. If the party is giving me yet another chance, I will give it my best yet again. Let me fight and win as a councillor first, mayoral considerations are the leadership’s prerogative,” said Hakim, the transport minister, who is among the six Calcutta MLAs being fielded by Trinamul.
The others are Ghosh, Debashis Kumar, Debabrata Majumdar, Paresh Pal and Ratna Chatterjee.
Calcutta South MP Mala Roy, too, is getting a ticket.
Rajya Sabha member Santanu Sen is the only major face among outgoing Trinamul councillors being denied candidature. His wife Kakoli is being fielded instead.
The party, secretary-general Partha Chatterjee clarified, is not going to the election with a mayoral face. The matter will be decided after the results.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, amid unprecedented gains by the BJP in the state, the saffron camp secured leads in 50 of the 144 wards, but that was reduced to 11, two of which were further wrested by Trinamul in the September bypoll in Bhowanipore.
“We are going into the polls with (Assembly election results, extrapolated) leads in 134 of the 144 wards. The BJP has leads in nine wards. The Congress leads in one. The Left leads in none. The results of the election next month are unlikely to be very different. We may make more gains,” said a Trinamul vice-president.
“We got over 60 per cent of the votes in CMC, in the Assembly election this summer. The BJP got zero seats, and secured barely 29 per cent votes. That gap can only widen further right now,” he added.
Of the 87 outgoing councillors being retained, nine are going to be fielded from wards different from the ones they won from in 2015.
“Sixty-four of our 144 candidates are women, that’s nearly 45 per cent, in keeping with our unwavering commitment to women empowerment,” said Calcutta North MP Sudip Bandyopadhyay, one of the seniors who attended the meeting at Mamata’s residence 30B Harish Chatterjee Street. “Nineteen of our candidates are from Scheduled Castes. Twenty-three are from minority communities, including two from the Christian community...,” he added.
Trinamul replaced 39 outgoing councillors – including former Jorasanko MLA Smita Bakshi, Sudarshana Mukherjee, Ratan Dey and Ratan Malakar — promising to utilise their services in party organisation or other areas.
The number of new candidates is 57. They include Kakoli Sen, Mamata’s sister-in-law Kajari Banerjee, deceased minister Subrata Mukherjee’s sister Tanima Chatterjee, minister Shashi Panja’s daughter Pooja Panja, minister Chandrima Bhattacharya’s son Sourav Basu and MLA Swarnakamal Saha’s son Sandipan Saha.
Also in fray among the new is former cricket administrator Bishwarup Dey.
“She (Mamata) struck a deft balance between the old and the new, between the experienced and the fresh blood, between her own instincts and the advice of Team PK (Kishor) and Abhishek. This is a splendid list,” said a senior Rajya Sabha member of the party.
“It proves beyond doubt, if any remained, that she wields total control and has the final word on matters pertaining to the party. Some, however, might argue that this goes against our newly adopted policy of one person, one post,” he added.
