The Bharatiya Janata Party has taken control of the English Bazar Municipality in Malda after 11 Trinamool Congress councillors who declared themselves independents backed BJP candidate Amlan Bhaduri in a chairperson election held on Wednesday. One other independent councillor also supported Bhaduri, allowing the BJP to reach the majority required to form the board with three BJP councillors.
Bhaduri, who is also the ruling party’s chief whip in the West Bengal Assembly and the MLA from English Bazar, was elected after the municipality convened a meeting to choose a new chairperson. The previous chairperson, Krishnendu Narayan Chowdhury, had resigned from the post last month, creating uncertainty over the board’s leadership.
The 11 councillors had informed the district administration before the meeting that they would become independents. Shubhamay Basu, one of the councillors, said they had been elected on Trinamool Congress tickets but were facing an identity crisis after the party’s election symbol was frozen by the Election Commission, according to the report. He said municipal services had deteriorated and that councillors had largely been limited to issuing certificates from their ward offices over the previous four to five months.
“We were elected by people to provide services. Now we want to become independents and provide services to ordinary people for the remaining period,” Basu said, as reported by Anandabazar. He also said the group would not nominate a separate candidate for chairperson.
BJP councillor Sutapa Mukhopadhyay proposed Bhaduri’s name, while Krishna Nag seconded the proposal. The 11 councillors who had declared themselves independents then supported Bhaduri, along with the independent councillor already on the board. Bhaduri rejected the suggestion that the BJP had engineered defections, saying that no one had been brought over and that the board was being formed through the procedure followed after the chairperson’s resignation.
The change follows a sharp shift in the municipality’s numbers. Trinamool Congress had previously held the majority with 25 of the 29 councillors, while the BJP had three. The remaining 14 Trinamool councillors were present during Wednesday’s vote, but the BJP-backed candidate secured the additional support needed to take control of the board.
The vote also brought together several figures from competing factions within the local Trinamool Congress. Former chairperson Krishnendu Narayan Chowdhury attended the meeting as a Trinamool councillor, as did Gayatri Ghosh, wife of former Trinamool MLA and former chairperson Nihar Ranjan Ghosh. Differences between Krishnendu and Nihar Ranjan have previously surfaced publicly, although both were present on the same side during the vote. Chowdhury said the procedure had been followed and that he did not know why the 11 councillors had chosen to become independents.
The municipal change came a day after the BJP also took control of the Malda district council following a contested board-formation process. The district council vote involved an earlier no-confidence motion, the relocation of members to another state and a police visit to the resort where they were staying, according to the report. The BJP, which had four members in the 30-member district council, secured control after a section of Trinamool members supported its candidate Dipika Bala. The immediate administrative test for the new English Bazar board will be whether it can restore the municipal services cited by the councillors as the reason for their political realignment.
