Mamata changes district presidents

Kolkata: In a major reshuffle, the Trinamool Congress supremo has changed the district presidents of Jangalmahal and North Bengal where the party has failed to get a single seat in the recent Lok Sabha election.

Mamata Banerjee held a marathon meeting with the party's core committee members, the candidates of the Lok Sabha election, district presidents and observers at her Kalighat residence on Saturday afternoon.

After coming to power, Banerjee had visited Jangalmahal and North Bengal maximum number of times to win the confidence of the people. While Jangalmahal was hit by the Maoist movement, Darjeeling witnessed the movement for a separate Gorkhaland. Her repeated visits had yielded results and peace was restored in both the areas.

In North Bengal, the Trinamool Congress has lost seven out of eight seats which include Cooch Behar, Alipurduar, Raigunj, Balurghat, Jalpaiguri, Darjeeling and Malda North seats to BJP while Malda South was won by the Congress candidate.

In Jangalmahal, the TMC lost Bankura, Bishnupur, Purulia, Jhargram, Asansol and Burdwan-Durgapur

seats to the BJP.

Suvendu Adhikari, the state Transport minister, has been appointed to look after Jangalmahal, Murshidabad and North and South Dinajpur as the observer.

Birbaha Soren Tudu has been made the president in Jhargram. Banerjee had replaced Uma Soren who became the MP in 2014 with Tudu. She lost to her BJP opponent.

Ratna Dey Nag has been appointed the party's chairman in Hooghly district. Dey Nag who was the party's MP twice has been defeated by Locket Chatterjee of the BJP. She will be assisted by Prabir Ghosal, Ashima Patra and Dilip Yadav.

Subrata Mukherjee will look after the Panchayats and Rural Development department as the minister. He had contested from Bankura and lost.

Arpita Ghosh and Kanaia Lal Agarwal have been appointed as the district presidents in South and North Dinajpur. Both Ghosh and Agarwal lost to their BJP contenders.

Subhasish Batyabal and Shyamal Santra have been appointed as the presidents in Bankura and Bishnupur districts. Santra was defeated by his BJP rival in Bishnupur seat.

Veteran party leader Shankar Singh has been appointed as the president in Ranaghat while Mahua Moitra, the party MP from Krishnanagar, has been appointed as the chairman of Krishnanagar.

Mausum Benazir Noor who was defeated on Malda North seat has been made the president in Malda. Abu Taher who was elected from Murshidabad has been made the district president while Subrata Saha has been appointed as the chairman of the district.

Firhad Hakim has been appointed as the observer in Howrah, Hooghly and Burdwan West districts while Aroop Biswas has been made the observer in North Bengal.

Dinesh Trivedi has been appointed the chairman of Hoogly River Bridge Commissioners (HRBC) and Apurba Sarkar has been appointed as the chairman of North Bengal State Transport Corporation.

Sudip Bandyopadhyay will be the party leader in the Lok Sabha while Kalyan Bandyopadhyay will be the Chief Whip.

Abhishek Banerjee will look after the revision of the voters' list.